Creat­ing the Future
Doctoral Projects

Doctoral Projects

Every year, the Hector Fellow Academy supports several doctoral positions for promis­ing young scien­tists from all over the world. Under the super­vi­sion of a Hector Fellow, they will work on their innov­a­tive doctoral projects over a period of three years. In addition to financ­ing their positions, they receive additional research funding from the Academy and take part in further train­ing events.

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Current projects

The follow­ing doctoral projects projects are supported

Mitochon­dr­ial DNA mutational landscape in human T cells

Yu-Hsin Hsieh – Hector RCD Awardee Leif Ludwig

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.

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© Yu-Hsin Hsieh

High-through­put Virus Discov­ery in Next Gener­a­tion Sequenc­ing Data

Franziska Klingler – Hector Fellow Ralf Bartenschlager

Anelloviruses are a diverse group of ubiqui­tous viruses infect­ing humans and verte­brates. Their contri­bu­tion to disease devel­op­ment remains elusive. We hypoth­e­size that during lifelong, persis­tent infec­tion disbal­ances in the viral commu­nity can drive onset and progres­sion of disease, e.g. cancer. We aim at a thorough descrip­tion of the viral spectrum present in healthy and diseased tissue by high-through­put screen­ing of sequenc­ing data and subse­quent identi­fi­ca­tion of viral variants corre­lated with pathogenesis.

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© Franziska Klingler

Quantum simula­tion of strong inter­ac­tions of light and matter

Valentin Klüsener – Hector Fellow Immanuel Bloch

The central paradigm of quantum optics is the absorp­tion and emission of radia­tion by quantum emitters. When the coupling between an emitter and its environ­ment becomes strong, intrigu­ing radia­tive proper­ties can be engineered, such as direc­tional emission patterns or strongly modified emission rates. This project aims at access­ing such effects in a system of ultra­cold atoms in optical lattices where artifi­cial emitters decay by emitting matter waves rather than optical radiation.

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© Valentin Klüsener

Main group hetero­he­licenes for appli­ca­tions in organic electron­ics and catalysis

Jan Niedens – Hector RCD Awardee Agnieszka Nowak-Król

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.

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© Jan Niedens

Defin­ing novel resilience pathways in rare monogenic disorders

Daniel Peter­sheim — Hector Fellow Christoph Klein

In the EU alone, approx­i­mately 30 million people are affected by a rare disease, many of them children. Most of the 6,000 to 8,000 rare diseases known to date are caused by the altered function of a single gene (Boycott&Ardigó, 2018). This project under the super­vi­sion of Prof. Christoph Klein aims to develop innov­a­tive strate­gies for preci­sion medicine in rare diseases by (i) re-wiring aberrant molec­u­lar networks for thera­peu­tic purposes and (ii) identi­fy­ing novel “druggable” targets using CRISPR-Cas9-mediated genome-wide screens.

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© Daniel Petersheim

Helic­ity Preserv­ing Cavity for Circu­lar Dichro­ism Enhancement

Philip Scott – Hector Fellow Martin Wegener

Most modern drugs are made up of one handed­ness of a chiral molecule (one enantiomer). In many cases, depend­ing on the handed­ness of the enantiomer, the drug could have either benefi­cial or harmful effects, thus is it desir­able to be able to detect the handed­ness. Circu­lar dichro­ism (CD) spectroscopy can differ­en­ti­ate between the handed­ness due to differ­en­tial absorp­tion of circu­larly polarised light but suffers from weak signals; there­fore, a method that can enhance the signal is desired.

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© J. Feis et al., Phys. Rev. Lett.

Realiz­ing a Quantum Proces­sor based on Stron­tium Rydberg Atoms

Maxim­il­ian Ammen­werth – Hector Fellow Immanuel Bloch

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.

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Realisierung eines Quantenprozessors auf der Basis von Strontium-Rydberg-Atomen© Maxim­il­ian Ammenwerth

Mecha­nisms under­ly­ing patho­gen­e­sis of SARS-CoV‑2 infections

Yannick Stahl – Hector Fellow Ralf Bartenschlager

SARS-CoV‑2 hat eine Pandemie ausgelöst und ist für mehr als 18 Millio­nen Infek­tio­nen verant­wortlich. Es wird vermutet, dass COVID-19 das Ergeb­nis des Abster­bens infizierter Zellen und einer exzes­siven Aktivierung des Immun­sys­tems ist. Um Zelltypen und Signal­wege zu identi­fizieren, die zur Patho­genese oder viralen Replika­tion beitra­gen, werde ich Transkrip­tom­analy­sen und funktionelle Unter­suchun­gen ausgewählter Gene vornehmen. Diese Arbeit könnte zu der Entwick­lung neuer Thera­pien beitragen.

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Mechanismen der Pathogenese von SARS-CoV-2 Infektionen© Yannick Stahl

The inves­ti­ga­tion of the forma­­tion- and purpose of black matter in anaer­o­bic methane oxidis­ers and methanogens

Stian Torset – Hector Fellow Antje Boetius

The project inves­ti­gates the struc­ture, purpose, and mecha­nisms of origin for amorphous carbon formed by methanogenic and methane-oxidiz­ing archaea. I will use advanced biophys­i­cal, compu­ta­tional, and genetic tools to deter­mine the genes, proteins and struc­tures, includ­ing the molec­u­lar mecha­nisms involved in the forma­tion of this carbon. Poten­tial appli­ca­tions will be assessed. The project is super­vised by Hector Fellow Antje Boetius.

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© Stian Torset
   

Alumni projects

Find here an overview of the already completed projects.