Vita
2024 – today
Head of focus group at HIFMB, Germany
2020 – 2024
Postdoc at EPFL, Switzerland
2015 – 2019
PhD in Marine Science at KAUST, Saudi Arabia
2013 – 2015
MSc ISATEC at University of Bremen, Germany
2010 – 2013
BSc Biology at University of Bremen, Germany
Research Interests
I am an aquatic ecologist interested in the evolutionary dynamics of host-microbe interactions. In my work, I use symbiotic cnidarians as simple model systems to study the cellular mechanisms underlying the formation, maintenance, and breakdown of photosymbioses. For this, I combine the latest OMICS and imaging technologies to study the regulation of the cnidarian-algal endosymbiosis at the single-cell level. By studying the feedback between metabolic interactions and the host immune response, I aim to elucidate the molecular processes enabling the repeated evolutionary formation and recent ecological collapse of photosymbioses in the Anthropocene.