Tamara research interest is to understand the molecular mechanisms that regulate plant development in response to environmental cues and challenges. In the course of her career she has successfully investigated this problem from physiological, biochemical, molecular and genetic perspectives using the model organisms Arabidopsis and poplar. Although chloroplast biogenesis and function are essential and required for proper plant development and adaptation to environmental stresses, the molecular mechanisms and their potential applications in crop biotechnology remain largely unexplored. Her previous research focused on plastid-to-nucleus signalling during chloroplast biogenesis, and currently she is leading the UKRI program to engineer C2 photosynthesis in C3 crops.