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 3H01         Phone: 78835          Email

Caner Bağcı

Room: F-Bau 3H01         Phone: 74639          Email

PhD Students

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.

Room: F-Bau 3N01          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: F-Bau 3K01        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: F-Bau 3N01          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.

Room: F-Bau 3N01          Email

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.

Room: F-Bau 3K01          Email

Aleksandra Korenskaia

Aleksandra earned both her Bachelor's and Master’s degrees in biology with a minor in bioinformatics at Novosibirsk State University, where she developed a strong interest in bacterial genomics. Her previous research focused on comparative analyses of microbial genomes, linking genotype to phenotype, and studying bacterial evolution.

Aleksandra joined Nadine Ziemert’s group in September 2023. Her PhD work, as part of the MAGic-MOLFUN consortium, focuses on analyzing the phylogeny and functions of enzymes involved in natural product biosynthesis. The ultimate goal of her project is to build a comprehensive database and web application to facilitate the function prediction of these enzymes.

Room: F-Bau 3K01          Email

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
  • Dr. Luděk Sehnal, Postdoc
  • Timo Negri, Ph.D Student
  • Athina Gavriilidou, Ph.D Student
  • Dr. Alyaa Abdelhameed, Postdoc