Team:Heidelberg/Team Members

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Revision as of 16:34, 20 October 2009

Contact the team though our group email: igem.heidelberg.09@googlemail.com

Students

Michael Bartoschek

Michael is a bachelor student of Molecular Biotechnology at the Ruprecht-Karls University Heidelberg. He has recently finished the 4th semester. He likes the idea of Synthetic Biology and iGEM. He is looking forward on working with a highly motivated, young team and learning much about arranging own scientific projects.

Simon Haas

Simon is a Bachelor student in Molecular Cell Biology at the University of Heidelberg in the 4th semester. During several smaller internships at institutions like the BZH, ZMBH, HIP, ZI he gained experience in experimental molecular and cellular biology and biochemistry. He is fascinated by the idea of creating functional synthetic systems in biology. Besides Synthetic Biology Simon is highly interested in the fields of gene therapy and neuroscience. He will continue his studies in Biochemistry at the Imperial College London next semester.

Tim Heinemann

Tim started his scientific career at the Humboldt University Berlin with the Bachelor program of Theoretical Biophysics. Inspired by the beautiful cultural and academic atmosphere of Germany's capital he first encountered the field of Theoretical Biology. After three years he wrote his thesis in multivariate statistical analysis at the department of physics at the Free University Berlin. Currently he completes the second semester of his studies of Systems Biology within the Master's program Molecular Biosciences at the University of Heidelberg. During this work he realized that having knowledge in both the theoretical and practical field is essential to model biological systems. For example to make a good theoretical model it is necessary to be aware of the approximate character of the experiment and to evaluate the collected data. According to him this combination of the theoretical and the experimental approach is impressively realized with the iGEM idea. He is grateful to be part of this year's team and to have a nice summer with the students.

Corinna Hiller

Corinna has finished her bachelor thesis about experimental and computer-associated search for p53 inhibiting agents with subsequent validation by crystallography at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ) as a student of Molecular Biotechnology. As one of 30 other students she will start with the master of Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Heidelberg in October. The iGEM competition demonstrates a unique opportunity to organize a scientific project and to meet a young inspirational team of students.

Nao Iwamoto

Nao is a Master student of Cancer Biology at the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ). During his Bachelor's program in Theoretical Biophysics at the Humboldt University to Berlin he gained his strong enthusiasm towards Systems Biology. Before joining the iGEM team Heidelberg '09 he worked as a student research assistant in the lab of Dr. Ursula Klingmüller (Systems Biology of Signal Transduction) at the DKFZ. Being a member of the iGEM team Heidelberg '09 he is looking forward to contributing to the exciting project on the theoretical side and is glad to share a wonderful summer with the students.

Stephen Krämer

Stephen has just finished his 4th semester as a student of Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Heidelberg. He believes that biology can contribute to solutions to major challenges of the 21st century like the growing water and food shortage in many regions of the world. But in his opinion modern biology will only unfold its full potential if it will be based on a systematic foundation. This is the reason why he is fascinated by the ideas of Synthetic Biology.

Hannah Meyer

Hannah has just started her fifth semester as a student of Molecular Biotechnology. In her second semester she has started working in the Tucker group at the university of Heidelberg where she has worked in the field of neurogenesis and nerve development. After having learned new methods in wet lab work, she is looking forward to bringing in her experiences but also to organizing and setting up own scientific projects. She is very excited to work in a new field of biology and hopes to have a great summer with the other team members!

Douaa Mugahid

Biology for a better life is what Douaa believes in. Coming from a country where the availability of food and better health care is always an issue for the masses, she believes that as a biologist who can use science for the help of better, cheaper industrial/agricultural/medical use she has a lot to give to her own country and the masses at large. For those reasons Douaa studies Biotechnology as an undergraduate, but being faced with the immense costs that people are faced with in that industry in general made her want to think of how to bring them down. In silico optimization of biological processes away from the workbench in the lab seemed like the best idea, which is why she is currently doing a masters in Systems Biology at Heidelberg University. Being part of the iGEM team this year makes her know that as biologists there is so much we can do that is creative, useful and eventually cost effective and widely available for all researchers all over the world.

Anne Rademacher

Anne also just finished her 4th semester of Molecular Biotechnology at Heidelberg University. Next to her studies she had worked in Faiza Rharbaoui's group at Cellzome for three semesters. Regarding iGEM she looks forward to a summer with students from different studies and a lot of fun experiencing a new field of biology.

Hannah Uckelmann

Hannah is a student in the second semester of the Molecular Biosciences Masters Program with the major Molecular and Cellular Biology at the University of Heidelberg. She completed her bachelors degree in biochemistry at the Florida A&M University in the states. She has experience in obesity and cancer research and hopes to be able to contribute greatly to the wet lab work in this years iGEM project. She is excited to work on this fascinating project with a great group of students!

Lars Velten

After finishing high school, Lars spent a year volunteering in Development Cooperation, selling solar power to Massai people in northern Tanzania. Perceiving plants as the better solar cell, and also interested in everything else (but urchins), he turned to study Molecular and Cellular Biology at Heidelberg U, where he has now finished his 4th semester. He collected some wetlab experience during an internship with Kartsten Weis' lab at UC Berkeley, where he worked on a project studying proteome turnover. He is looking foward to working in Synthetic Biology.

Bingqing Zhao

Bingqing just finished her medical study this July in Peking University, China. The five-year study and internships in different hospitals has taught her a lot in medicine. This as well aroused her special curiosity for congenital disorders. She will continue her study in major Developmental Biology of master program Molecular Bioscience in Heidelberg University. Earlier this year, she took an internship at Prof. Eils' group, focusing on promoter measurement with real-time RT-PCR technique. This experience leads her to the iGEM team Heidelberg 2009. She is looking forward to an exciting and passionate summer with all the team mates!

Chenchen Zhu

At present, Chenchen is a master student of Molecular Biosciences Major: Infectious disease. He had studied Informatics in China for one year. After half-year learning of German in Berlin, he moved to Heidelberg and furthered his study in Molecular Biotechnology for three years. His main interest is in microbiology, especially in the research of Hepatitis B Virus. As a old member of the iGEM team Heidelberg last year, he will try to integrate his theoretical and experimental skills both in Biology and Informatics in the next few months.

Advisors

Roland Eils

Prof. Eils is again the head of the iGEM Heidelberg team. He provides the laboratories and all the required equipment. Besides, he will sponsor the traveling and participation costs. Thank you very much! The research interests of Prof. Eils lies in the field of the analysis and mathematical modeling of complex pathways in molecular biology. He can look back at a very successful career, as he is the head of the Department of Theoretical Bioinformatics in the DKFZ and working on computational oncology. Furthermore, he is the director of the Department of Bioinformatics and Functional Genomics of the IPMB at the University of Heidelberg.

Alongside Prof. Kräusslich and Prof. Wolfrum, he is one of three founding directors of the BioQuant, as well as the leader of the Systems Biology Center and the representative of the FORSYS-Initiative of Heidelberg’s research network, the ViroQuant. He has won numerous awards; in particular he has been awarded the Biofuture price (approx. 1.2 Million €) by the BMBF for innovations allowing the graphical reconstruction of the eukaryotic mitosis process from 4D microscopy images and in the year 2005 he won the award for new innovative research by Helmholtz Society: “SystemsBiology of Complex Diseases”. Besides, he was one of the main organizers of the International Conference on Systems Biology in Heidelberg 2004 and he organized the German Symposium on Systems Biology 2009. His new engagement in the up-coming field of Synthetic Biology underlines the need for tight interdisciplinary work between experimentalists and theoreticians.

Tobias Bauer

Tobias is a PhD student at Prof. Roland Eils' workgroup at the University of Heidelberg and the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ). He's part of the network modeling subgroup lead by Dr. Rainer König within which his focus is on gene regulatory networks. Although he exclusively works in bioinformatics, he studied Biology at Mainz University majoring in molecular genetics. Tobias' main interest today is how gene regulation "programs" are composed and how they interact on a genome-wide basis, especially in cancer and disease. His support of the team is mostly computationally, and he's looking forward to contributing his experience gained on his PhD-project to this year's iGEM Team Heidelberg.

Martí Bernardo Faura

Martí was born in Barcelona, where he finished his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science Engineering and his Master of Science in Pharmaceutical Industry and Biotechnology. Currently, he is a Ph.D student in the group of Theoretical Bioinformatics and the Institut für Pharmazie und Molekulare Biotechnologie at the Universität Heidelberg. In his Ph.D. thesis, Martí is focusing on data-driven modeling to elucidate the relationship between apoptosis and autophagy in terms of nonlinear interactions and enjoys working in the intersection of theoretical and experimental biology. He is surprised to be writing about himself in the third person. He is very happy to join this project and will support the modeling team and help with the in silico simulations.

Phillip Hundeshagen

Phillip is currently a Ph.D. student in the Applied Systems Biology Group of Professor Eils at Bioquant and DKFZ. During his Ph.D. thesis he is working on the crosstalk between apoptosis and autophagy. He is mainly interested in the development and application of novel high-throughput/high-content approaches to study cellular decisions on a comprehensive level. He joined the iGEM –team as an advisor/mentor and is very happy to contribute to this exciting and promising project.

Jens Keienburg

Jens is a PhD student in the bioinformatics group of Professor Eils at Bioquant. He has studied Molecular Biotechnology and is very glad to support now for the second time such a versatile team of avant-garde students.

Anna-Lena Kranz

Anna-Lena is a PhD student in the group of Roland Eils at the Institute for Pharmacy and Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Heidelberg and the DKFZ. She studied Bioinformatics and Genome Research at the University of Bielefeld and acquired her Master’s degree in Information Technology at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. In her PhD, Anna is interested in analyzing gene expression data on metabolic networks and has recently focused on transcriptional regulation. She is excited to support the Heidelberg team and contributes mainly to the computational work of the iGEM team.

Michaela Reichenzeller

Michaela did her PhD on the structure and dynamics of the interchromosomal domain compartment in eukaryotic cells in the department for Cell Biology at the German Cancer Research Center, DKFZ in Heidelberg. Following her PhD she worked as a Postdoc in the lab of Prof. Dr. Harald Herrmann on nuclear intermediate filament proteins called lamins. She investigated the influence of disease-related mutations in A- and B-type lamins on nuclear morphology. In 2005 she joined the group of Prof. Roland Eils. The main focus of her work is now on DNA double strand break repair by non-homologous end-joining (NHEJ) and homologous recombination (HR). She is investigating protein-protein interactions in living cells by using FRAP technology and kinetic modeling. The longterm goal of her project is to understand mechanisms of pathway choice between NHEJ and HR. She likes to support the students team with all her expertise in current molecular and cell biological as well as imaging techniques.

Yara Reis

Yara comes from Portugal where she studied Biochemistry. During her Master thesis in Lisbon, she got the opportunity to visit Heidelberg and decided to stay for her PhD. She is at Prof. Eils research group working on Systems Biology applied to Programmed Cell death in cancer cells. She will support the Heidelberg team in the experimental work and with good mood!

Daniela Richter

Daniela Richter is a PhD student from DKFZ working in the group of Theoretical Bioinformatics at Bioquant. She studied Molecular Life Science at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg acquiring her master degree in the field of Theoretical Chemistry in 2006. Before coming to Heidelberg she spend half a year working in the Research and Development Department at Qiagen. In her PhD, Daniela is interested in the role of endosomal trafficking in cellular life- and death decisions. Daniela contributes to the iGEM team as a lab supervisor as well as assisting with graphic design and presentation issues.

Subgroups

Cloning
Douaa Mugahid
Michael Bartoschek
Simon Haas
Lars Velten
Corinna Hiller
Bingqing Zhao
Chenchen Zhu

Cell Culture
Anne Rademacher
Hannah Meyer

Microscopy
Hannah Uckelmann

Measurements
Hannah Uckelmann
Corinna Hiller
Lars Velten
Bingqing Zhao
Chenchen Zhu

Modeling
Tim Heinemann
Nao Iwamoto
Stephen Krämer

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