I joined iDiv as a technical assistant in the Symbiont Evolution group in 2023. I have a PhD in Plant Science from the University of Innsbruck in Austria. For the last few years I have been working as a research technician in the Department of Evolution, Ecology and Behaviour at the University of Liverpool and more recently in the Centre for Genomic Research at the same university. My technical skills include molecular and analytical techniques, next generation sequencing, fluorescent in situ hybridisation and confocal microscopy. I look forward to supporting the needs of my group and passing on my knowledge to current and future students.

I began my doctoral work at iDiv in December 2023. For my PhD, I plan to use my interdisciplinary background in biology and geography to study the genetic diversity of insects and their bacterial endosymbionts. Prior to joining the Symbiont Evolution Group, I worked as a research assistant at the Leibniz-Centre for Agricultural Landscape Research (ZALF). While at ZALF, I studied insect populations in canola fields. Every day I grew more and more amazed with the diversity of insects I encountered during fieldwork or lab work. I’m excited to continue working with insects and hope to shed some light onto the role that endosymbionts play in their biodiversity.

I joined iDiv in 2022 as Junior Research Group Leader funded by DFG's Emmy-Noether-Programme. Previously, I was a Senior Lecturer at Oxford Brookes University and a Postdoc in University of Liverpool. I am broadly interested in the evolution of arthropod symbiosis, with a focus on inherited bacterial symbionts. My work has comprised approaches from genomics, phylogenetics, ecology, bioinformatics, and faunistics.

During my studies of food chemistry at the Martin Luther University (MLU) in Halle, I wrote my diploma thesis in the Department of Analytical Environmental Chemistry at the Helmholtz Institute for Environmental Research (UFZ) in Leipzig. This sparked my interest in interdependent processes and relationships in the environment, and I subsequently worked there as a research assistant. Since November 2022 I am a technical assistant in the Department Symbiont Evolution at iDiv and support the team especially in the laboratory.

I first joined the Symbiont Evolution Lab in March 2023 as a research assistant after completing my master’s degree in biology with a focus on Biodiversity, Evolution and Ecology at the University of Leipzig. As arthropod evolution and diversity started to fascinate me early on, I dedicated both my Bachelor and Master thesis to monitoring and understanding the diversity of coleoptera in Leipzig's floodplain forest, using a more traditional, morphological approach. As arthropod diversity naturally encompasses the numerous ways organisms interact with each other, understanding symbiont-arthropod relationships on a molecular scale immediately caught my interest. At iDiv I am currently refreshing and refining molecular approaches which I had learned during my time at the University whilst getting a glimpse of how interactions between arthropod hosts and bacterial symbionts can shape arthropod communities and ultimately drive evolution.

I commenced my Doctoral studies at iDiv in November 2022 after completing my master in Organismic, Evolution and Paleobiology (OEP-Biology) at the University of Bonn in Germany. My research was focused on the "Inter- and Intraspecific differences of host finding traits in parasitoid wasp, Nasonia spp. (Hymenoptera: Chalcidoidea: Pteromalidae)". After completing my master’s, I was a part of a project on "Minnow project" at the Leibniz-Institut zur Analyse des Biodiversitätswandels (LIB) Bonn, which investigated the spread of Phoxinus, an ecologically important schooling fish, in the River Sieg and its territories. Coming from this diverse background, I am broadly interested in the behavior and evolution of arthropods. I want to understand how, what and why makes an animal adapt to different environmental conditions, and how it affects interactions with others. To answer those questions was my primary motivation to start a PhD on Symbiont Evolution investigating the adaptation of inherited symbionts in novel host.

I joined the Symbiont Evolution Group at iDiv as a Senior Researcher in 2023, having previously worked as a Marie Curie Fellow and Research Assistant at the University of Liverpool. My research focuses on understanding the diverse microbes associated with hosts, particularly microbial symbionts found in arthropods. I use genomics and metagenomics approaches, including nanopore sequencing technology, to unravel the secrets of their evolution. Together with my colleagues at iDiv, I am dedicated to unravelling the mysteries of these microscopic partnerships and their role in shaping our natural world.