Mirjana Seskar, received her Ph.D. in December 1998 and is currently working as a Postdoctoral Associate the laboratory of  Dr. Nigun Tumer at the Biotech Center of Cook College, Rutgers University.

I was born and raised in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia, where I got my BS in Agronomy in 1989 at the Institute for Field and Vegetable Crops, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Novi Sad, at the laboratory of Dr. Rudolf Kastori.

In 1990 I came to the Texas A&M University, College Station. There I studied at the Soil & Crop Sciences Department in labortaories of Drs. Tom Cothren and Page Morgan and got my MS in Agronomy in 1993.

While in Texas, I married Ivan Seskar, and after Texas I came to Rutgers University to study in laboratory of Dr. Ilya Raskin, at the Biotech Center, New Brunswick. Currently, I am in my final year as a graduate student in Plant Biology Program.

My research interest is salicylic acid (SA); a plant hormone implicated as a signal in plant disease resistance. Initially, I was involved in research including pathway of SA biosynthesis and role of SA in rice (Silverman et al., 1995; Schweizer et al., 1997). I was also interested in role of active oxygen species and early steps in SA biosythesis in tobacco (Mittler et al., 1996). I am now working on the metabolism of SA, namely, on the accumulation of methyl salicylate in virus-inoculated tobacco (Seskar et al., 1998). My current project is purification and characterization of SAM: salicylic acid methyltransferase.