Professor Petra Marhava earned her Ph.D. from the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) in 2015, working  on the molecular mechanisms underlying patterning and subcellular trafficking in Arabidopsis roots in Professor Jiří Friml’s group. She then joined the University of Lausanne (UNIL), Switzerland, as a postdoctoral fellow in Professor Christian Hardtke’s group, where she investigated the regulation of auxin transport during protophloem development. 

Professor Marhava established her independent research program in 2022 at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU) in Umeå, focusing on how temperature stress affects auxin transport. Her work has been supported by prestigious funding, including Starting Grants from both the European Research Council (ERC) and the Swedish Research Council (VR), as well as a career grant from the Scandinavian Plant Physiology Society (SPPS). She has been recognized through her inclusion in AcademiaNet, a leading international database of outstanding female scientists. 

In 2025, she joined KAUST with her research group as an Assistant Professor, where she leads innovative projects investigating how plants cope with environmental challenges, particularly temperature extremes and drought stress. 

Professor Marhava’s research integrates state-of-the-art techniques to uncover the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying root responses to environmental stress, with a focus on temperature extremes and drought. Her work reveals how temperature influences hormonal cell-to-cell transport and shapes plant acclimation strategies. By studying both model species, such as Arabidopsis thaliana, and naturally resilient extremophytes, her research uncovers survival mechanisms that are critical for anticipating the impacts of climate change on agricultural and natural systems, as well as for improving and protecting economically important plants.