Dr. Vânia Pankievicz received a B.S. degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Brasilia and an M.S. degree in Biochemistry Sciences from the Federal University of Paraná, Brazil, in 2010. In 2012, she studied legume-microbe interactions as a research scholar at the University of Missouri, and in 2014, she received her Ph.D. in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Federal University of Paraná. Vânia is an expert on interactions between nitrogen-fixing bacteria and crops. She was at the Department of Agronomy and Bacteriology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, as a post-doctoral researcher, working on corn and sorghum accessions that host nitrogen-fixing bacteria in the mucilage produced by their aerial roots. Currently, she is a full-time scientist at GoGenetic a biotech company, and CEO at GoSolos.