The main research focus of my group is Biomineralization – the formation of inorganic architectures by living organisms. This tremendously active research field connects many scientific disciplines such as chemistry, earth sciences, biology, medicine, and materials science.

The biomineralization process is not only interesting because of its biological control and sophisticated biochemistry, it is also essential for deepening our understanding of the geochemical cycling of elements, climate change and climate reconstruction, and offers a huge potential for development of sustainable materials.

Our research focusses on the formation mechanisms and properties of biomaterials derived from one group of microalgae: the dinoflagellates. I introduced calcareous dinoflagellates as a model system for studying extracellular biomineral morphogenesis in single-celled organisms and pioneered a new dinoflagellate biomineralization model. Our aim is to link biomineralization fundamentals with environmental information and develop sustainable materials using a combination of advanced spectroscopic and imaging techniques.

Our research aligns with the IQCB in the following three points:

1) Especially in terms of multidimensional spectroscopy (Raman + IR) we apply chemometric methods/multivariate analysis to interpret our datasets.

2) Furthermore, we use image analysis tools for 2D and 3D imaging data (Fluorescence, SEM) with AI

3) Currently we are also exploring the genetic toolkit of our model organism – using genomics and transcriptomics. As dinoflagellate genomes are known to be large (in our model organism ~ 12 Gbp) we need powerful bioinformatics for their analysis.

Positions held 

Since 2021 
Junior Professor of Biomineralization/Crystallography, Institute of Geosciences, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany

2018-2021 
Junior Group Leader / Habilitation, Bioanalytical Chemistry, TU Dresden, Germany

2016-2017 
Postdoctoral Researcher, Structural Biology, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel

2015 
Scientist/Postdoc, Bioanalytical Chemistry, TU Dresden, Germany

Education

2010-2014 
PhD in Bioanalytical Chemistry, TU Dresden, Germany

2008-2010 
MSc in Chemistry, TU Dresden, Germany