Prof Teresa Coutinho is a Professor in the Department of Biochemistry, Genetics and Microbiology at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. She is Affiliated with both the Centre for Microbial Ecology and Genomics and the Forestry and Agricultural Biotechnology Institute.
Her research focus is on plant pathogenic bacteria, mostly those that are considered opportunistic, and their interactions with their hosts. Understanding how they cause disease symptoms led to the sequencing of the genome of the first plant pathogen in Africa.
Over the past 15 years since Prof Coutinho initiated her research programme in phytobacteriology, she has Trained 22 MSc and 12 PhD students in this specific field. She has an h factor of 41 (Scopus) with 4671 citations.
Prof Coutinho is a Fellow and Past President of the Southern African Society for Plant Pathology (SASPP).
