Alex Schultink grew up in the state of Michigan and moved to Calfiornia to attend Stanford University. At Stanford he majored in Biology and did a minor in Computer Science. After graduating from Stanford in 2009 he began a PhD program studying Plant Biology at UC Berkeley. Schultink joined the lab of Markus Pauly and studied plant cell wall biosynthesis. He worked mostly with the plant Arabidopsis thaliana to uncover new genes invovled in the bisynthesis of the cell wall polysaccharide xyloglcuan. After finishing his PhD in 2013 he changed fields slightly to study plant microbe interactions as a post doc in the lab of Brian Staskawicz for three years. Now, as an entrepreneurial research fellow, Schultink is leading a research group focused on the discovery and deployment of new genetic mechanisms of disease resistance in plants. Using resistance traits to control plant pathogens, rather than relying on chemicals, is cheaper and better for consumers and the environment. By taking advantage of new methods in biotechnology, including high-throughput DNA sequencing and genome editing, he is able to rapidly identify new disease resistance traits.