Bio

I’m a postdoctoral research in Nicola Müller’s group at the Experimental and Population-based Pathogen Investigation Center (EPPIcenter). My research will focus on investigating local transmission dynamics of respiratory pathogens using phylodynamic modelling paired with diverse data inputs. With my work I would like to inform public health interventions that are tailored to the specific transmission dynamics on a local level.

But I’ve not always worked in epidemiological modelling or with infectious diseases. I did my Bachelor’s at the University of Hamburg, Germany, in Molecular Life Sciences. During my Bachelor thesis, I realised that I enjoyed the data analysis and coding part of my thesis the most, rather than trying to keep my cells alive or trying to make them fluoresce under the microscope. Thus, I switched to studying Systems Biology at Heidelberg University, Germany, which was a great program that taught me how to think about modelling complex biological systems. During my PhD in Evangelia Petsalaki’s group at the EMBL-EBI in Cambridge, UK, I studied the context-dependency of cancer vulnerabilities by analysing large-scale CRISPR-KO screens. This work sparked my enthusiasm for Bayesian statistics combined with building mathematical models for specific research questions while carefully modelling the specific properties of different data modalities. Since half of my PhD time happened in the midst of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic and realising how quickly pandemics can emerge, I want to use my position at the EPPIcenter to improve our abilitiy to model transmission dynamics of respiratory pathogens and to propose effective public health interventions.