Speakers

Otger Campàs is a W3 Professor and holds the Chair of Tissue Dynamics at the Cluster of Excellence Physics of Life of TU Dresden since July 2021. Since January 2022 he is also the Managing Director and Speaker of the Cluster of Excellence Physics of Life. Previously, he was Associate Professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he spent 10 years.

His research group combines theoretical and experimental methods to study the role of physics and mechanics in shaping embryonic tissues and organs, as well as the relation between the genetic and mechanical control of embryonic morphogenesis. 

He received the 2019 Elizabeth Hay New Investigator Award from the Society of Developmental Biology and in 2017 he received the NSF CARRER award for the development of pioneering techniques to study tissue mechanobiology. In 2008, while postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University, he spearheaded a highly popular event titled, “Cooking and Science with Ferran Adrià” at Harvard University, and was later co-founder of the "Science and Cooking" course and lecture series at Harvard University. For more information about his research, please visit https://physics-of-life.tu-dresden.de/research/core-groups/campas

Maria Fedorova studied Biochemistry at Saint-Petersburg State University, Russia and obtained her PhD at Faculty of Chemistry and Mineralogy, Leipzig University, Germany. She worked as a group leader at the Institute of Bioanalytical Chemistry, Faculty of Chemistry and Mineralogy, at the University of Leipzig. In August 2021 Maria group moved to the Center for Membrane Biochemistry and Lipid Research, TU Dresden. Her research is focused on development and implementation of lipidomics and bioinformatics solutions to address complexity and plasticity of lipid metabolism in variety of biological systems. In particular, Maria aims for a deeper understanding of pathophysiology of metabolic and inflammatory disorders, including obesity, insulin resistance, type II diabetes and cardiovascular disorders.

Thorsten Mascher is a W3 Professor and holds the chair of General Microbiology at the TU Dresden since 2015. Previously, he was Associate Professor at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich.

Thorsten and his group are interested in how Gram-positive bacteria communicate with, and respond to changes occurring within their environment. They investigate antibiotics as signals and weapons. How do bacteria perceive antibiotics in the environment? How do they become resistant when challenged with antibiotics? How do antimicrobial compounds mediate and interfere with differentiation processes? Along those lines, the group also became increasingly thrilled about studying bacteria as multicellular organisms. After all, the process of microbial tissue formation is very much coordinated by intercellular interactions, from sharing public goods to sacrificing subpopulations through programmed cell death.

T-Y Dora Tang received her PhD from Imperial College London, UK, in 2010 in the area of membrane biophysics. After one year as an EPSRC knowledge transfer secondee at Diamond Light Source, Oxfordshire, UK she undertook a post-doc at the University of Bristol, UK, in the areas of origin of life and then synthetic biology. In 2016 she started her independent lab at the MPI-CBG, Dresden as part of the MaxSynBio consortium. Her research lies between biophysics, synthetic biology and materials chemistry with the goal of building minimal synthetic cellular systems as physical models for biological phenomena specifically those related to compartmentalisation. These minimal systems aim to address questions in origin of life and in modern biology  such as “what are the conditions required to drive molecular organisation from disorder?”

Thorsten studied Biochemistry, Biophysics & Immunology at ETH Zürich & University Tübingen and recieved his PhD from TU Dresden and the International Max Planck Research School for Molecular Cell Biology and Bioengineering in 2006. During his PhD Thorsten focused on proteomic analysis of the sorting machinery involved in vesicular traffic. In 2007 Thorsten went to Havard Medical School in Boston for a two-year Postdoc stay. Thorsten has more than 15 years international epxerience in Biopharma holding various positions within Quality Control, Project Management and Process & Analytical Development at Lonza in Switzerland & Boehringer Ingelheim in Austria. Since 2022 Thorsten is Department Head of Development Operations / Process Science Austria and is responsible for the process and analytical development for the complete microbial Human Pharma pipeline of Boehringer Ingelheim as well as the complete microbial third party development portfolio of the Boehringer Ingelheim BioXcellence Business.

Tobias Heckel is an experienced laboratory head, team lead, and project manager with a strong background in discovery, translation, and implementation of biomarkers for diagnostics, patient care, and innovative treatments. Tobias holds a degree in biochemistry from the University of Tübingen and a Ph.D. in biology after successfully completing the International Ph.D. Program of the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany. During his career he worked in Australia, USA, Switzerland, and Germany, and has held positions of increasing managerial responsibility in the pharmaceutical as well as life science and diagnostics industries at the world leading companies Roche and Siemens Healthineers. Tobias has authored/co-authored thirty publications and patents that include the world's first Cynomolgus monkey genome, as well as the development of the first splicing modifier drug treating spinal muscular atrophy.

Anne-Kristin Heninger is the Co-Founder and CEO of Seamless Therapeutics GmbH, a spin-off from the Technical University (TU) Dresden. She began her career in the field of genome editing at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden in 2016. In 2019, she took over the scientific project management of the GO-Bio recombinase project (RecTech) under the leadership of Prof. Frank Buchholz and was instrumental in developing the business and financial plan, as well as preparing the company's founding and securing seed-funding for Seamless Therapeutics. She holds a B.Sc. in Biochemistry and Microbiology from the University of Washington in Seattle, USA and earned her PhD in Immunology at the TU Dresden.

Yu-Wen sees himself as a zoologist, based on the BSc training at National Taiwan University, Taiwan. Later after 2 years of master research on stem cell biology and regenerative medicine at the same institute, Yu-Wen joined the Tomancak lab, one of the craziest adventurous parallel universes, and started his Ph.D. journey in the Max Planck Institute of Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) in Dresden, Germany. The knowledge Yu-Wen has gained in the field of developmental biology and stem cell biophysics has encouraged him to consider stepping out of his comfort zone. Therefore, Yu-Wen became a strategic biotech/pharma consultant in Berlin, in 2021.

Yu-Wen is willing to share his career journey, as well as discuss the diversity, chances, challenges, and potential achievements in the pharma consulting realm.

Helena is a graduated molecular biologist with a passion for design. After completing a PhD at EMBL, she worked with multi-dimensional datasets, images and genome-scale data at the Max-Planck Dresden. While a scholar at the Wissenschaftskolleg (Institute for Advanced Studies) Berlin Helena researched biomedical data visualisation practices and today combines her expertise with large data sets with her interest in data visualisation as a scientist at the University Hospital Dresden. At present she researches visual aids for patient-doctor communication. Helena trains and consults in life science data visualisation and is a lecturer for biomedical data science at Berlin Hochschule für Technik. She blogs, tweets, and writes about all aspects of data visualisation. Before her career change from biology to data visualisation, Helena dipped her toe in the science management waters, first as science manager at the CRTD and then setting up an Early Clinician Scientists programme at the Medical Faculty.

Christian Kuttner studied chemistry at the University of Bayreuth, Germany. After graduating in 2009, he conducted his doctoral studies on macromolecular interfaces of organic/inorganic composites and colloidal materials in the group of Prof. Andreas Fery. As a postdoctoral researcher, he developed nanostructured materials with optical functionalities at the Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research (IPF) in Dresden. In 2018, he joined Prof. Luis M. Liz-Marzán’s research group at CIC biomaGUNE, Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain, where he continued his investigations as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie fellow. His research interests comprise the synthesis of polymeric, noble metal, and hybrid particles and their directed assembly into superstructures as stimuli-responsive optically functional materials for application in sensing. In 2021, he accepted an editorial position at Springer Nature for Nature Communications, handling manuscripts in physical chemistry and nanomaterial sciences.

Vinzenz’ love for science and technology led him to do a PhD on zebrafish proteomics at the MPI-CBG in the groups of Carl-Philipp Heisenberg and Andrej Shevchenko between 2001 and 2006. He continued to pursue mass spec for proteomics during his postdoc at Ruedi Aebersolds group at the ETH Zurich. Subsequently, he moved back to Dresden in 2009 to join the DKMS Life Science Lab. The DKMS is an international non-profit organization committed to serving blood cancer patients by providing access to stem cell donors. Being responsible for technology development he spearheaded the transformation from Sanger sequencing to NGS for high-throughput HLA sequencing, thus scaling donor profiling 8-fold whilst dramatically cutting costs. In his current role as CTO he leads scientific and technological innovations. With a highly motivated and skilled team he is constantly pushing the boundaries of immunogenetics and leukaemia diagnostics for the benefit of blood cancer patients.

Andrea is a molecular biologist by training and worked on stem cell maintenance in Arabidopsis before moving to the field of trafficking. In 2009 she obtained her PhD, for which she studied DE-Cadherin trafficking in Drosophila with Yohanns Bellaiche at the Curie Institute. She then went to Anne Ephrussi’s lab at the EMBL in Heidelberg to work on oocyte polarity and mRNA trafficking in Drosophila. Andrea was scientific editor at The EMBO Journal from 2013 until 2017 and executive editor of Life Science Alliance, a journal jointly published by EMBO, Rockefeller University, and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Presses that she also helped launching in this role. She then moved to Heidelberg University to accompany strategic, technological, and collaborative matters as the scientific managing director of the Field of Focus 1 (life sciences) Research Council and the CellNetworks Core Technology Platform. Additionally, she recently took on the role of administrative director of the Health + Life Science Alliance Heidelberg Mannheim gGmbH, a joint initiative of the seven large life science institutions in Heidelberg and Mannheim.

Sandy Westermann studied biology with focus in molecular infection biology, microbiology, and cell biology. During her PhD and postdoc, she specialized in RNA and infection biology. Sandy is a scientist at heart but her passion lies with art and design. She has always been captivated by the fact that an illustration can make or break the communicative impact of research data. For this reason, Sandy now works as a freelance scientific illustrator. Specifically, she finds ways to convert complex data into simple, yet engaging scientific visualizations. Over the past six years, she has been fortunate to work with a variety of clients from all over the world on graphical support, including tailor-made illustrations for publications, presentations, grant applications, websites, books, and press releases. Sandy says: “It is my belief that without clear, visual, and intriguing representation, even the most remarkable discovery will never attain its full impact nor reach its desired audience. I strive to achieve this for my clients.”

Anne studied biotechnology, incl. two research stays in Uppsala, Sweden, where she also decided to pursue her PhD-studies in medical cell biology. After that Anne continued her research on (sub-)cellular processes in the liver as a post-doc at the MPI-CBG. As a next step she decided to join an industrial research environment and since 2021 works as Innovation Manager Bio-Med at the new ZEISS Innovation Hub here in Dresden.

Curious on what this job description entails or how the transition from science to industry went? Come and talk to Anne on the career day, she will be happy to answer your questions.