Associate Professor Caitlin Byrt

Caitlin is a co-founder of Membrane Transporter Engineers (MTE), a biotech start-up that develops components for crop improvement purposes and for highly specific element and nutrient separation from complex solutions.

Caitlin’s team has designed novel protein components and tested the function of hundreds of naturally occurring diverse membrane proteins using cutting-edge and specialised approaches.

The team engineers value-adding components for advancing membrane separation technologies and improving plant productivity in challenging environments. The components MTE creates can be embedded in membrane-based filtration systems for gaining new functions and used in critical mineral processing, and MTE delivers components that can be incorporated in plant cell membranes for improving crop performance.

Caitlin previously identified mechanisms in wheat for improving salinity tolerance and developed markers for introducing these mechanisms into modern varieties.