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

Anna obtained her bachelor’s degree at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki and her master’s degree at the LMU in Munich. During her bachelor’s thesis, she investigated the effect of the pathogenic bacterium Photobacterium damselae subsp. Piscicida on the digestive system of the Artemia franciscana nauplii and the possible protective effect of the probiotic Lactobacillus plantarum both in vitro and in vivo. For her master’s thesis, she studied cleavage kinetics of the C-terminal fragment of EpCAM, a tumour associated antigen, by γ-secretase and its proteasomal degradation using live cell imaging at the Klinikum Groβhadern. Anna joined the Hamperl group as PhD student in November 2018.
 
Research interest: Structural analysis of replication origins
Nationality: Greek

Henning obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degree in biotechnology at the Weihenstephan-Triesdorf University of Applied Sciences in Freising. For his bachelor’s thesis, he was involved in the development of a hyperforin biosynthetic pathway in yeast at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Biology in Braunschweig. For his master’s thesis, he studied the effect of hyperglycemia on the proteome of primary keratinocytes using quantitative mass spectrometry in the Research Unit Protein Science (PROT) at the Helmholtz Zentrum München. In September 2018, Henning joined the Hamperl group as a PhD student. 

Research Interest: Genetic and Epigenetic Consequences of Transcription-Replication Conflicts

Nationality: German

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
 

Contact: eva.hoermanseder@helmholtz-muenchen.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

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