I think she studies about natural resources or ecology? Is that enough reason to abduct someone? I don't know. But she is just a scholar, not a professor. I'm sure you can find someone more experienced in the industry.
Yeah, not sure. Like I said, I think this is extremely unlikely.
My thought was that if she was studying crop productivity, I would imagine there are some people in that field whose work is of great interest to the government or others. If someone knows a gene or a chemical that could massively increase crop production (or on the flipside, hurt it), maybe there was someone out there worried about that or not wanting it to get out. Like I said, far fetched- just doing the internet version of thinking out loud
The thing with academia is is that you don't need to be the most experienced to be the one doing the work- in fact, quite the opposite. Young scholars are really the ones making most of the discoveries and doing most of the lab work. They might not be the ones with the power or the money, but they are the ones actually learning new things. As someone who went to grad school and thinks a lot about scientific training and academia, I have a slightly biased view here, but just thought it was worth throwing out there.
It seems as if it was less targeted than this scenario though, IMO.