The forma­tion of cells in our blood is sustained through­out our lifetime by hematopoi­etic stem cells. An under­stand­ing of the output and activ­ity of individ­ual stem cells, however, is only emerg­ing. In my project, I will inves­ti­gate clonal recon­sti­tu­tion dynam­ics and evalu­ate hematopoi­etic regen­er­a­tion utiliz­ing somatic mutations in the mitochon­dr­ial genome as natural barcodes in match­ing bone marrow and periph­eral blood samples from patients under­go­ing allogenic stem cell transplantation.

In this project, an innov­a­tive quantum gas micro­scope is devel­oped that makes use of optical tweez­ers to rearrange neutral stron­tium atoms into config­urable and defect-free patterns. This allows for rapid initial­iza­tion of the system and serves as a start­ing point for the analog simula­tion of quantum many-body systems and as a qubit regis­ter for digital quantum comput­ing. Exploit­ing long-range Rydberg inter­ac­tions enables the simula­tion of spin models and the imple­men­ta­tion of quantum logic gates.

Boron-contain­ing polyaro­matic hydro­car­bons (PAHs) draw increas­ing inter­est due to their appeal­ing optical and electronic features. They are promis­ing candi­dates for appli­ca­tions in organic electron­ics, e.g. OLEDs, transis­tors and organic solar cells. This project is focused on the synthe­sis of new chiral organoboron PAHs and the inves­ti­ga­tion of the impact of their chiral geome­try on the opera­tion of such devices.

Somatic mitochon­dr­ial DNA (mtDNA) mutations are associ­ated with a wide range of human disor­ders, yet it has been diffi­cult to reliably estab­lish mitochon­dr­ial genotype-pheno­type associ­a­tions. There­fore, we aim to integrate metabolic profil­ing readouts with single-cell multi-omics sequenc­ing techniques to charac­terise the conse­quences of patho­genic mtDNA mutations and increased mitochon­dr­ial mutational burden at the cellu­lar and genomic level.