Niokhor Bakhoum studied Natural Sciences and Plant Biology at Cheikh Anta Diop of Dakar (UCAD), Senegal. He did a PhD thesis (2009-2012) on soil microbiology (symbiotic bacteria) in LCM_Laboratoire Commun de Microbiologie (IRD/ISRA/UCAD), LEMSAT (IRD/ISRA/UCAD) both in Dakar, Senegal and LSTM (IRD/CIRAD/INRA/SupAgro/UnivMontpellier) in Montpellier, France. From June 2013 to May 2014 he did a post-doc at CNRF/ISRA (Senegal) on the use of agro-biological methods for the recovery and reclamation of soil affected by salinity in the Sine-Saloum. He went to India from August to October 2014 as a visiting fellow at microbial genetics laboratory, Department of Agricultural Microbiology, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University (TNAU) of Coimbatore. The program was funded by the CV Raman fellowship of the India government and the research consisted of monitoring maize rhizospheric bacteria using metagenomic approaches. From 2015 to 2017 Niokhor worked as a postdoc at ISRA in the Laboratoire National de Recherches sur les Productions Végétales (LNRPV) at Dakar (Senegal). He did researches on the sustainable intensification of millet based agrosystems using cowpea and the valorisation of organic waste in agriculture by composting in the Groundnut Basin. He visited from September to December 2017, the Microbial genetics lab at Molecular, Cell & Developmental Biology department of University California Los Angeles (UCLA) at USA. The program was funded by USDA through Norman Borlaug fellowship. There, he worked on the development and use of a microbial inoculum to increase millet production in rural areas of Senegal. He joined the Castrillo’s group at the University of Nottingham on October 2019. Currently he is working on a project funded by Rothamsted International and the University of Nottingham, that try to define the molecular mechanisms controlling the assembly of the plant microbiome.