Sarah Agapito completed a PhD (2011-2014) in plant genetics with the CropScience Department at the Federal University of Santa Catarina in Brazil.
Sarah has been appointed to the UN Roster of Biosafety Experts in 2013 by the Brazilian Government and in 2018 by Norway. She has been actively participating in the Network of Laboratories for the Detection and Identification of Living Modified Organisms that is hosted by the Biosafety Clearing House Portal as part of the Clearing-House Mechanism of the UN Convention on Biological Diversity.
In addition, Sarah has been a consultant to multiple government and non-governmental agencies in Brazil and Norway, and has organized two international biosafety courses. More recently, she has been actively engaged in UNEP/GEF and FAO/GEF projects for the implementation of UN Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety in Swaziland and in The Kyrgyz Republic.
Her research experience includes plant breeding, plant genetic diversity and conservation, and risk assessment of genetically modified organisms. Specific expertise are: biochemical and genetic characterization of transgenic crop plants and transgene flow to wild relatives (particularly as it relates to environmental safety), and transcriptomics (particular dsRNA) and proteomics. The main goal of her current research is to uncover the roles of transgenes in gene regulation in plant systems and to apply that knowledge to assessing their safe use in food and the environment.
