Interfakultäres Institut für Mikrobiologie und Infektionsmedizin

Postdocs

Dr. Martina Adamek

Martina Adamek studied environmental sciences at Bielefeld University, where she decided to focus on the fields of Microbiology and Biotechnology. She finished her diploma thesis in the Proteome and Metabolome research group at Bielefeld University, where she worked on the biosynthesis of Xanthan gum in Xanthomonas camperstris pv. Campestris . For her PhD she moved to the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Institute of Microbiology on Natural and Technical Interfaces (IFG) where she investigated the diversity within the opportunistic pathogenic bacterial species Stenotrophomonas maltophilia and was able to find novel candidate virulence genes of S. maltophiliausing comparative genomics. After finishing her PhD she worked as a postdoc at the University of Heidelberg, Institute of Immunology, developing various PCR applications for the use in clinical routine. Her interest in Microbiology brought her to Tuebingen, where her current research is directed at investigating the mechanisms and the evolutionary processes involved in creating the variety of bacterial natural products.

Room: F-bau 3. E21         Phone: 78835          Email

Caner Bağcı

Room: 10A41         Phone: 74639          Email

Dr. Luděk Sehnal

Ludek finished his PhD in Environmental chemistry and toxicology at RECETOX (Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic). He studied the chemical diversity of cyanobacterial metabolites with special emphasis on biosynthesis of retinoids. Ludek joined our group in October 2022 thanks to his successful application for MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowship, and his current research interest is (meta)genome mining of "cool" microbes and follow-up heterologous expression of their "hot" BGCs. During his PhD, Ludek was a member of scientific expeditions to the Arctic (Svalbard, 2014) and Antarctic (James Ross Island, 2015). Based on the samples that he collected during these expeditions, he established Antarctic Microbial Biobank, which is currently transforming into Czech Antarctic Microbial Biobank (CAMB). Futher, he was awarded by Endeavour Research Fellowship 2017 from Australian Government for a research visit to the lab of Professor Brett Neilan in Australia, where he was learning synthetic biology tools and approaches that applied into his research of cyanobacterial metabolites.

Room: 10A41         Phone: 78870          Email

Dr. Alyaa Abdelhameed

Alyaa Abdelhameed studied Biology and finished her Bachelor thesis in the field of microbiology at the Al-Anbar University.  During her Bachelor studies she was interested in the world of medical microorganisms, therefore  her Master studies was conducted in microbial enzymatic activities of Enterobacteriaceae at the University of Baghdad. For her PhD she moved to the Institute of Life Science at the University of Swansea, UK. Her PhD focused on the correlation between archived metal-polluted soils and microbial resistance to antibiotics. The effect of metal pollution stress on bacterial diversity in different soils samples was investigated. Diversity of BGCs and resistance genes were determined in the whole genome sequencing for the selected bacterial isolates. She is currently a member of  Microbiology Society  and a researcher at the University of Tübingen, where she focuses on the diversity of secondary metabolites underlying the human microbiomes.

PhD Students

Timo Negri

Timo Negri studied Biosciences at the Heidelberg University and finished his Bachelor thesis in the field of Glycolbiology at the Center for Organismal Studies Heidelberg. During his Bachelor studies he became interested in the world of microorganisms and therefore decided to conduct his Master studies in Microbiology at the University of Tuebingen. He completed his Master's degree in the research group of Applied Natural Products Genome Mining, where he investigated different soil types for their microbial natural product biosynthetic potential. Fascinated by the great diversity of natural products, he decided to continue his work as a PhD student. He is interested in investigating and accessing the true microbial biosynthetic capacity of promising soil types.

Room: 10A08          Phone: 2973211          Email

Franziska Höhn

Franziska Höhn studied food sciences and biotechnology at the University of Hohenheim. She finished her Bachelor's degree on the field of food microbiology and hygiene. Interested in microorganisms, she started her Master's degree in microbiology at the University of  Tübingen. In October 2019, Franziska finished her Master thesis in the field of screening metagenomic libraries for natural products in the group of Applied Natural Products Genome Mining. Fascinated by the great opportunities in natural product research, she stayed in the group as a PhD student. In a cooperation project with the AG Brötz-Oesterhelt and the Kemen group, Franziska investigates the role of natural products in shaping microbial communities. As a model system, she uses a bacterial synthetic community from Arabidopsis thaliana (Kemen group). Her work aims to increase the knowledge of natural product based interactions in nature and helps to identify members important for plant health and disease prevention.

Athina Gavriilidou

Athina Gavriilidou studied Biology at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, during which she became interested in the application of informatics tools that further biological goals. She completed a Masters Degree in Bioinformatics at the Eberhard Karls University of Tuebingen. At that time she was hired as a student assistant in ZiemertLab, where she wrote her Master Thesis on the Natural Product potential and diversity within the bacterial kingdom. Since February 2020 Athina is working as a PhD student, researching the evolution of glycopeptide biosynthetic gene clusters and their interaction with bacterial primary metabolism.

Room: 10A41     Phone: 78870        Email

Bita Pourmohsenin

Bita Pourmohsenin got her Bachelor's and Master's degree in Computer Science from Amirkabir University of Technology (Tehran Polytechnic), during which she found her interest in the Application of computational methods in Bioinformatics. As her Master's thesis, she worked on developing an algorithm for Phylogenetic Tree Reconstruction based on Clustering.Finding her passion in Bioinformatics, she decided to pursue a PhD in the field. She joined the Ziemertlab team in February 2020, as a PhD student. She is currently working on exploring the potential of environmental metagenomic data. 

Room: 10A41        Phone: 78870        Email

Davide Paccagnella

Davide Paccagnella studied biology at the University of Tübingen and finished his Bachelor thesis in the field of cyanobacteria. Because of his interest in microbiology, he continued his studies with a Master’s in microbiology. For his master thesis he worked on different actinomycetes clusters obtained through genome mining to identify secondary metabolites with a potential therapeutic application. Due to his interest in the combination of bioinformatics and wet-lab he joined the Ziemertlab team in October 2021, where he works on a EU-funded project. Goal of project is to develop novel hybrid molecules with tailor-made properties obtained from the combination of biosynthetic genes of amphiphilic compounds (biosurfactants and siderophores).

Room: 10A08          Email

Turgut Mesut Yilmaz

Turgut Mesut YILMAZ studied bioengineering at Ege University. During his Bachelor’s degree, he focused on Natural Products, virtual biotransformation reactions products and computer aided drug design studies. Then, Turgut Mesut finished his Master’s degree in the bioengineering programme at Ege University. In his master thesis, he was interested in investigating the usage potential of fungal natural products as active agents by molecular modelling methods. Additionally, he developed himself in the fields of isolation and purification of natural products and cell culture during this time. After approximately five years of entrepreneurship experience, Turgut Mesut started his doctoral studies at Ziemert Lab in March 2021. He is working on new tools to predict binding behavior of Natural Products, and synthetic biology approaches.

Semih Erdogmus

Semih Erdogmus studied bioengineering at Ege University. He focused on microbiology and genetics during his Bachelor's degree. Then, Semih finished his Master's degree in the bioengineering programme at Ege University. During his Masters' degree, he was interested in bioinformatics. In his Master's thesis, titled "Identification of DNA markers through association mapping of Fe, Zn, Ca, Mn, and Mg elements in common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.)", he worked on association mapping in plant genetics. Semih started his doctoral studies at Ziemert Lab in January 2023. He is working on a machine learning approach for the prediction of antibiotics' mode of action.

Team Mascot

Kiara

Belgian Shepherd/Good Girl 

Ziemertlab Alumni

  • Dr. Daniel Mannle, Ph.D Student
  • Mark Polster, Bachelor Student
  • Dr. Mohammad Alanjary, Ph.D Student
  • Dr. Helena Sales-Ortells, Postdoc
  • Michelle Schorn, UCSD visiting student
  • Maryam Elfeki, UIC visiting student
  • Kyra Geyer, Master student
  • Frauke Adam, Master Student
  • Katharina Steinke, Master Student
  • Anastasia Leonova, Master Student
  • Monica Daneliuc, Master Student
  • Dr. Shrikant Mantri, Ph.D student
  • Dr. Mehmet Direnç Mungan Ph.D student
  • Dr. Aileen Berasategui-Lopez, Postdoc