Viruses are much more than parasites with a negative impact on the host. They can infect all domains of life and have differ­ent types of relation­ships with their host: From a parasitic to even benefi­cial relation­ship. One poten­tially benefi­cial relation­ship in favor of their host cell is the ability of some viruses to prevent super­in­fec­tion by other viruses, which is known as super­in­fec­tion exclu­sion (SIE). However, our under­stand­ing of this mecha­nism is rather scare. This project aims to decipher the molec­u­lar mecha­nism under­ly­ing SIE in haloar­chaeal viruses using molec­u­lar and virolog­i­cal techniques.

Monomeric or parti­cle-based multi­meric subunit vaccines are widely used to induce humoral immune responses that protect from disease. However, how antigen valency and spacing affects B cell activa­tion and antibody produc­tion is not well under­stood. Using a malaria vaccine antigen as model, the project combines DNA-origami-based exper­i­men­tal work with mathe­mat­i­cal model­ing to define how the biophys­i­cal parame­ters of antigen presen­ta­tion and antibody affin­ity affect B cell activation.

A cosmic web of galax­ies and diffuse gas perme­ates our Universe. This cosmic web glows through faint, but measur­able, Lyman-alpha emission of its neutral hydro­gen. This project aims to charac­ter­ize said cosmic web in cosmo­log­i­cal simula­tions of galaxy forma­tion. Connect­ing to upcom­ing obser­va­tional data sets, new pathways for our under­stand­ing of galaxy and struc­ture forma­tion emerge.

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.

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.