Sonia Evans has published in high-profile scientific journals, won several awards and completed a PhD from the University of Toronto, but she traces her achievements to someone who had no formal education whatsoever: her grandmother.
A believer in the healing power of plants, Evans's grandmother hailed from a southern Nigerian village, and regularly crafted plant-based traditional medicines for ailments ranging from infertility to skin conditions.
"She knew the type of plants to go to, and made different concoctions for us," says Evans, who defended her PhD in U of T Mississauga's department of cell and systems biology in November and is poised to continue her research as a postdoctoral fellow at U of T Scarborough. "She never knew the names of the plants, but she knew the types of plants to put together to get the result she was expecting."
Evans, who was born and raised in Nigeria, completed undergraduate studies in plant science in her home country before earning a master's degree in plant biology in Israel. With a growing interest in plant metabolism, she decided to pursue a PhD at U of T Mississauga under the supervision of Michael Phillips , an associate professor in the department of biology.
"[Phillips] was really involved in plant metabolism… and really trying to understand how plants make chemicals that are important not just for their growth, development and for photosynthesis, but also for us," Evans says. "These are chemicals that we use as drugs, flavours, fragrances, cosmetics and biofuels. I was really interested in that part of the research."
Since joining the Phillips lab, Evans has focused on how plants control carbon supply towards the production of isoprenoids - high-value compounds that are critical to plant growth, defense and crop productivity and also have a range of industrial and pharmaceutical applications.
Her research has had a huge impact on the field. In 2024 alone, Evans published two papers in the prestigious Nature journals, as first author.
The most recent paper, published in Nature Plants in October , sheds light on a decades-old mystery: the origins of pyruvate, a vital precursor for production of isoprenoids, amino acids and fatty acids in chloroplasts, which are responsible for plant photosynthesis. The research revealed that Rubisco, a critical enzyme that's responsible for fixing carbon dioxide during photosynthesis, also plays a secondary role in supplying pyruvate.
This discovery not only redefines how scientists understand plant metabolism, but also solves a long-standing paradox of the origin of pyruvate, with Evans's findings providing a critical link between photosynthesis and the production of isoprenoids. By uncovering how plants channel carbon toward these valuable compounds, her research opens the door to innovative biotechnological strategies for engineering crops with enhanced productivity and resilience.
The previous paper, published in Nature Communications in February , laid the groundwork for how a key metabolic pathway could be engineered in plants for synthetic biology applications.
All the more impressive: Evans managed these accomplishments while carrying out her responsibilities as mother to a young child - which she credits to a strong support system of family, her spouse, friends and peers. "It's been a learning curve… but I have tried to take everything one step at a time, and check myself every day," she says.
Evans's scholarly excellence resulted in her earning the Roberta Bondar Graduate Student Excellence Award last fall. She was also named a Provost's Postdoctoral Fellow , and will carry out her postdoctoral research in the lab of Eliana Gonzales-Vigil, assistant professor in U of T Scarborough's department of biological sciences.
Reflecting on her decision to come to U of T, Evans reveals she doubted her chances of being granted admission to Canada's top-ranked university. "I was like, 'Oh my God - who am I to be at the University of Toronto?'" she says. "But I wanted to be at a very good university, and I had to keep trying to aim higher and higher for myself."
