Most animals exhibit bilat­eral symme­try, but asymmet­ric traits have repeat­edly evolved in differ­ent taxonomic groups. However, the genetic mecha­nisms respon­si­ble for asymmet­ric trait varia­tion remain unclear. We will use the scale-eating fish, Peris­so­dus microlepis, to dissect the genetic basis of its remark­able morpho­log­i­cal and behav­ioural asymme­try. This study will yield impor­tant insights into the mecha­nis­tic under­pin­nings of asymmet­ric devel­op­ment and the origin of evolu­tion­ary novelty.

Highly emotional memories are processed differ­ently from neutral ones. For negative experi­ences, this can result in maladap­tive memory forma­tion which may foster emotional psycho­log­i­cal disor­ders. This project aims to improve our under­stand­ing of adaptive and maladap­tive memory process­ing. We will analyze brain activ­ity in tasks that model maladap­tive memory symptoms. By this, we hope to identify entry points for treat­ments that counter­act maladap­tive memory formation.

Our study aims to analyse and map the cytoar­chi­tec­ture of the human hypothal­a­mus in histo­log­i­cal sections of 10 postmortem brains. As a result, we want to develop a high-resolu­tion 3D recon­structed histo­log­i­cal model of the hypothal­a­mus and its nuclei as a tool for assess­ing the struc­ture-function relation­ship and a proba­bilis­tic cytoar­chi­tec­tonic map of the hypothal­a­mus that will reflect the variabil­ity of hypothal­a­mic nuclei between individ­ual brains, in terms of size and location in standard refer­ence space.

The ability of non-resis­tant bacte­r­ial pathogens to survive antibi­otics during infec­tion (toler­ance) contributes not only to global rise of antibi­otic resis­tance, but also to chron­i­cal relapse of infec­tions. The aim of the project is to under­stand what contributes to bacte­r­ial revival after antibi­otic treat­ment and the under­ly­ing biolog­i­cal pathways. The findings of this project will contribute to better informed decisions on the selec­tion of antibi­otics to treat infec­tions and prevent relapse. 

Due to techno­log­i­cal advances we can now build devices that actively manip­u­late quantum mechan­i­cal objects, and using quantum objects as infor­ma­tion carri­ers has many impor­tant impli­ca­tions for future commu­ni­ca­tion. Quantum infor­ma­tion can be used to achieve perfect security and provide efficiency for commu­ni­ca­tion networks. This research project focuses on design­ing secure and anony­mous quantum commu­ni­ca­tion proto­cols in an effort to build a future quantum internet.

T cell differ­en­ti­a­tion and function are tightly regulated by numer­ous cellu­lar processes, includ­ing cellu­lar metab­o­lism, which can be signif­i­cantly affected by mitochon­dr­ial DNA (mtDNA) mutations. However, the impact of mtDNA mutational burden on T cell differ­en­ti­a­tion and functional hetero­gene­ity remains poorly under­stood. Thus, this project aims to charac­ter­ize the mtDNA mutational landscape and its functional conse­quences in human T cells using single-cell multi-omics approaches.

This project is focused on the synthe­sis of novel helically chiral compounds contain­ing diaryl­bo­role, arsole and stibole units. The aim of this research is to obtain materi­als with improved optical and electronic proper­ties by joining helical chromophores via boron as a spiro-atom. Addition­ally, helicenes contain­ing arsenic and antimony could be used as ligands in asymmet­ric catal­y­sis due to their higher stabil­ity towards oxida­tion, compared to the common phosphine analogues.