Dr. Damien  Lightfoot received his Ph.D. from the University of Adelaide (Australia) in 2007. Following this, he commenced his Postdoctoral studies on plant stress tolerance before moving to KAUST in August of 2014. At KAUST, he worked as a Research Scientist in BESE under Prof. Mark Tester and continued his research on plant abiotic stress tolerance, while developing an interest in bioinformatics and genomics. These interests led him to a second Research Scientist position, with Prof. Tim Ravasi, using bioinformatics approaches to investigate the responses of coral reef fishes to future climate change conditions. In January of 2018, Damien shifted away from research and took on a role in Postdoc and Researcher support under Dr. Virginia Unkefer, within the office of the Senior Vice President for Research. In this role, Damien is working to coordinate professional development opportunities for Postdocs and Researchers while also liaising with faculty, human resources, and administration on matters related to KAUST researchers. Additionally, he is working on reviewing and improving policy and procedures related to current and future researchers at KAUST.