Adam did his undergraduate studies at the University of Sheffield, UK, in Biochemistry. He obtained his PhD in 2010 from the MRC LMCB at University College London on the signalling role of IP6 kinases. He joined the lab in May 2010. His work has been supported by a fellowship from the Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale and he was a recipient of an EMBO short-term fellowship.
 
Research interest: Epigenetic basis of cell fate in the early embryo and heterochromatin formation.

Nationality: British

Antoine did his Masters in Paris working on DNA damage response and heterochromatin. During this time he visited the lab of Rodney Rothstein at Columbia University. He obtained his Ph.D at the University of Paris under the supervision of Pierre Thérizols and Emmanuelle Fabre. His work focused on the study of heterochromatin integrity and organisation in stem cells.  Antoine joined the lab in February 2021.

Research interests: nuclear organisation and heterochromatin integrity

Nationality: French

Margarita obtained her Bachelor in Foodchemistry and Masterdegree (Licenciatura) in  Foodtechnology  at the University of Castilla-La-Mancha (UCLM). With a Erasmus grant she was at the Saarland University where she deepened her microbiology and molecularbiology knowledge. After that, she moved to the Office of Castilla-La Mancha to the EU in Brussels. Since 2000 Margarita is in Germany working above all in the fields of proteinchemistry, molecularbiology and immunology for different companies as scientist and as technical assistant. She joined our IES- Team as lab manager in the summer 2021.

Nationality: Spanish

Yung-Li obtained both his bachelor and Master degrees in biomedical sciences at Chang Gung University, Taiwan. During his master, he focused on aberrant DNA methylation and epigenetic editing in Nasopharyngeal cancer. Yung-Li joined the lab in September 2019.

Research interest: Centromere formation and kinetochore assembly

Nationality: Taiwan

Andreas obtained his PhD from the Max-Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and the Technical University of Dresden. After working with various microscopy techniques as a postdoctoral fellow at the Max-Planck Institute and at the University of California in San Francisco, he joined the IES as head of the Microscopy Core in 2016. 

Nationality: German

Contact: andreas.ettinger@helmholtz-muenchen.de

Clara obtained her Bachelor's in Chemistry and Biology at the University Grenoble Alpes, where she also performed her Master's in Physiology Epigenetics and Development. She first joined the lab for her final Master's work, where she focused on the analysis of the chromatin structure of specific transposable elements during development. She then joined as a Ph.D student in October 2019. 

Research interest: Transposable elements regulation in development

Nationality: Belgian

Tsunetoshi obtained his Master’s degree at the Kyoto Pharmaceutical University in Japan, on the role of the P2X7 receptor in neuronal death. He performed his PhD under the supervision of Toru Nakano at Osaka University, where he studied DNA replication and its interrelationship with ectopic accumulation of 5-hydroxymethylcytosine upon Stella deletion in mouse zygotes. He joined the lab in September 2015.

Research interest: Chromatin integrity and regulation of totipotency.

Nationality: Japanese

Marlies obtained her Master’s at the University of Groningen on drug innovation. She did her Ph.D in Job Dekker’s lab at UMass, where she focused on chromosome organisation, particularly during mitosis, and developed approaches to understand chromosome segregation and folding. She joined the lab in September 2021 and was awarded an EMBO fellowship for her postdoctoral work.

Research interest: Transposable elements in early mammalian development.

Nationality: Dutch

Mrinmoy obtained his integrated Master’s degree at the Indian Institutes of Science Education and Research (IISER), Kolkata. After doing several internships at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, the CSIR-IGIB in Delhi and the University of Göttingen, Mrinmoy performed his Master’s thesis in  Sanjeev Galande’s laboratory in IISER Pune, where he focused on the role of histone methyltransferases during regeneration in Hydra. Mrinmoy joined the lab in January 2019.

Research interest: Nuclear organisation in the early mouse embryo

Nationality: Indian

After completing his Bachelor in Biomolecular Biotechnology in Florence, Federico obtained his Master’s and Ph.D Degree at Soka University. He performed his Ph.D under the supervision of Shoko Nishihara, focusing on the functional analysis of glycosylation in murine stem cells in different pluripotent states. During his Ph.D he was awarded with the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) Scholarship (Top Global University Project). He joined the lab in April 2021 and was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship from the Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation.

Research interest: 3D genome organisation.

Nationality: Italian

Tamas obtained his degree in Biology at the University of Szeged, with a specialisation in molecular biology. He performed his Ph.D in Andreas Ladurner’s lab at EMBL and graduated from the LMU, where he focused on understanding cell-type specific gene expression programmes. He then performed postdoctoral training on functional genomics with Peter Becker at the BMC in the LMU, before moving on to the Bioinformatics Facility of the Collaborative Research Center ‘Chromatin Dynamics’ in the team of Tobias Straub. Tamas has performed significant research across several chromatin and transcription-related topics, as well as in genome organisation. He joined the lab as Senior Computational Biologist in January 2022.

Research interest: data analysis and integration, genomics and development of new approaches to understand cell identity from low-input methods and machine learning.

Nationality: Hungarian

Maria-Elena did her undergraduate studies at the Faculty of Sciences of the UNAM, Mexico and obtained her PhD at the Institut Pasteur in Paris in 2002. She was a postdoctoral fellow at The Gurdon Institute, University of Cambridge, UK between 2002 and 2006 and then worked as a permanent scientist with Laszlo Tora. She started her own lab at the IGBMC in Strasbourg, France, and has been leading her group since December 2008. The lab moved to the Institute of Epigenetics and Stem Cells in January 2016.

Nationality: Mexican

Contact: torres-padilla@helmholtz-muenchen.de

Yung-Li obtained both his bachelor and Master degrees in biomedical sciences at Chang Gung University, Taiwan. During his master, he focused on aberrant DNA methylation and epigenetic editing in Nasopharyngeal cancer. Yung-Li joined the lab in September 2019.

Research interest: Centromere formation and kinetochore assembly

Nationality: Taiwan

Andreas obtained his PhD from the Max-Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and the Technical University of Dresden. After working with various microscopy techniques as a postdoctoral fellow at the Max-Planck Institute and at the University of California in San Francisco, he joined the IES as head of the Microscopy Core in 2016. 

Nationality: German

Contact: andreas.ettinger@helmholtz-muenchen.de

Elizabeth graduated with honors in Genomic Sciences from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) in 2023. Driven by her interest in human disease, she joined Vijay's lab at La Jolla Institute for Immunology in California in 2021. There, she contributed to the research focused on the identification and characterization of the role of causal genetic variants in human disease on a genome-wide level. In February 2024, she transitioned to Hamperl's lab at the Institute of Epigenetics and Stem Cells, furthering her scientific journey.

Research interests: human diseases, developmental epigenetics, evolution, and computational biology.

Nationality: Mexican

Augusto studied for a “Licenciatura en Biologia” at the University of Buenos Aires. He worked on his thesis at the institute of biosciences, biotechnology, and translational biology where he studied the role of genetic mutations in combined pituitary hormone deficiency under Dr. Maria Ines Perez Millan. He then moved to Germany to work at the Hamperl Lab as a lab manager.

Nationality: Argentina

...for I was conscious that I knew practically nothing...

...what I do not know, I do not think I know either...

                               Plato, Apology

Atiqa obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology from the University of Karachi and a Master’s in Biosciences from Shaheed Zulfikar Ali Bhutto Institute of Science and Technology, Karachi, Pakistan. After her Masters, she joined the Aga Khan University, Center for Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research as a research associate where she focused on understanding the 3D genome organization of human prophase nuclei. Atiqa joined Hamperl lab as a doctoral student in December 2022 to work on the single-molecule analysis of replication origin chromatin.

Marcel obtained his bachelor’s degree in Molecular Medicine at the University of Goettingen, where he also performed his master’s degree in the International Max Planck Research School for Molecular Biology. For his master’s thesis, he joined the lab of Patrick Cramer, studying the effect of cyclin-dependent kinase 7 (CDK7) inhibition on transcription regulation in human cells. Marcel joined the lab as a PhD student in December 2020.

Research interests: Transcription-replication conflict-driven chromatin changes and genomic instability

Nationality: German

Maxime performed his PhD studying the telomerase RNA and long non-coding telomeric RNAs dynamics and recruitment at telomeres in S.cerevisiae in Montreal University in Quebec, Canada under Dr. Pascal Chartrand supervision. He is now doing his postdoctoral studies at the Institute of Epigenetics and Stem Cells in Dr. Stephan Hamperl lab since November 2020 where he is interested in the interplay between transcription-replication coordination and cell fate maintenance in mouse embryonic stem cells.

Nationality: Canadian

Stephan did his undergraduate studies at the University of Regensburg where he also performed his PhD research with Dr Joachim Griesenbeck. He then moved to Stanford University in California to conduct his postdoctoral research in Karlene Cimprich’s lab before returning to Germany to establish his own group at the Institute of Epigenetics and Stem Cells in March 2018.

Nationality: German
 

Manuel pursued his undergraduate degree at the University of Bayreuth, followed by a master's at LMU Munich. He engaged with 3D cell printing in Munich's 2016 iGEM team and did his master's thesis in the group of Dr. Jürg Müller at the Max-Planck Institute for Biochemistry. He was involved in bioinformatic projects in the group of Prof. João Pedro de Magalhães in Liverpool, UK. Supervised by Dr. Eva Hörmanseder, Manuel investigated H3K4me3 propagation in early Xenopus embryogenesis in the group of Sir John Gurdon at the University of Cambridge, UK. He also gained business insights working as a Venture Fellow Assistant at Apollo Health Ventures, responsible for scientific due diligence. Currently, Manuel is developing software tools for automated image and data analysis in the lab. Furthermore, he is exploring novel in vitro systems to study transcription-replication conflicts in a mammalian cell line.

Clare did her undergraduate and master studies at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). She then performed her PhD research with Dr King-Ho Cheung at the University of Hong Kong. She then returned to HKUST to conduct her postdoctoral research in Bik Tye’s DNA replication lab before going to Germany to continue her postdoctoral research in Stephan Hamperl’s lab at the Institute of Epigenetics and Stem Cells in June 2022.

Nationality: Hong Kong SAR

After completing his Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and gaining working experience as an engineer, Marco obtained his Master's degree in practical computer science with a focus on machine learning. He then joined the IES as a PhD student in December 2020. He is working as a computational biologist in the Hoermanseder lab, with a special interest in gene regulatory networks.
 

Ana moved to Germany for her undergraduate studies in Biochemistry at the University of Heidelberg with the support of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). She worked at the EMBL Genome Biology Unit for her master's thesis, investigating the epigenetic mechanisms involved in neuronal differentiation. She joined the Hörmanseder lab as a PhD student in November 2021, tackling the epigenetic barriers to cell fate reprogramming. 

Nationality: Macedonian

Meghana obtained her undergraduate and Master’s degrees at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Kolkata. She did her Master’s thesis in Prof. Sanjeev Galande’s lab in IISER Pune, where she worked on the role of the chromatin organizer Satb2 in neural crest development. Intrigued by developmental epigenetics, she joined the IES as a PhD student in November, 2020. She is now exploring the maintenance of active chromatin marks during early embryonic development in Dr. Eva Hörmanseder’s lab.

Contact: eva.hoermanseder@helmholtz-munich.de

Gabriele received his bachelor degree in Physics from the University of Torino, Italy in July 2017.  Then he obtained the master degree in Physics of Complex System from the same university in April 2019. During his master thesis he focused on cell competition in mouse embryo combining the analysis of single-cell RNA-seq data with mathematical modelling. He joined the lab in May 2019.

Nationality: Italian

After completing his Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering and gaining working experience as an engineer, Marco obtained his Master's degree in practical computer science with a focus on machine learning. He then joined the IES as a PhD student in December 2020. He is working as a computational biologist in the Hoermanseder lab, with a special interest in gene regulatory networks.
 

Antonio completed his undergraduate studies in Physics at the University of Naples “Federico II", Italy, where he also received his PhD in Fundamental and Applied Physics. After that, he moved to the UK to work as a postdoc, first in the lab of Martin Howard at the John Innes Centre, then in the lab of John Marioni at the EMBL-EBI and the Welcome Trust Sanger Institute, in Cambridge. 

Nationality: Italian

Contact: antonio.scialdone@helmholtz-muenchen.de

Nico Battich began his scientific career in Scotland, where in 2010 he obtained a first-class degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology from the University of Glasgow. He carried out his Ph.D. in Systems Biology at the University of Zurich. Nicolas has been awarded postdoctoral fellowships from the Swiss National Science Foundation and the Human Frontier Science Program to conduct research at the Hubrecht Institute in the Netherlands. He is a group leader at the Helmholtz Pioneer Campus in Munich since August 2022, where he works on the systems biology of stem cell differentiation.

Publications

Contact: nicolas.battich@helmholtz-muenchen.de