LAB MEMBERS
We are looking for team members at all levels. If you are interested in joining our team, please look for more information here. We are looking forward to hearing from you!
Dr. sc. Gabrijela Dumbović, Group leader
Gabrijela Dumbovic is a Group Leader at the Institute for Cardiovascular Regeneration at the Goethe University Frankfurt. She received her Ph.D. in 2017 working on long non-coding RNAs from macrosatellite repeats in colon cancer in the laboratory of Dr. Perucho & Dr. Forcales at the Institute for Predictive and Personalized Medicine of Cancer in Barcelona, Spain. She carried out her postdoctoral work in the laboratory of Dr. Rinn at BioFrontiers in the U.S. where she worked on long non-coding RNA biology and novel aspects of subcellular RNA localization regulation. She joined the Max Planck Institute for Immunobiology and Epigenetics in the lab of Dr. Grün for a brief period before starting her lab to specialize in high throughput single-molecule RNA imaging and quantitative single cell biology. Her lab studies long non-coding RNAs and subcellular RNA localization regulation in relevant disease models.
Luise-Elektra Keller, PhD student
Luise received her Bachelor's degree in Biochemistry from the University of Leipzig. She then completed her Master's degree in Molecular Medicine at the Charité in Berlin. During her Master's degree, she completed an internship in the working group of Prof. Dr. Nils Blüthgen (Computational Modelling in Medicine at the Institute of Pathology of the Charité) to analyse transcriptional changes in response to microenvironment in colon cancer organoids. Internship in the group of Dr Matthias Truß at the Charité was dedicated to the analysis of the therapeutic significance of a potential non-canonical hedgehog signalling pathway in therapy-resistant ALL in relapse. Luise wrote her master's thesis at the Robert Koch Institute with Dr. Oya Cingöz on the molecular and functional characterisation of reporter-tagged HIV-1 envelopes.
Josep Biayna Rodriguez, senior postdoc
Josep received his Ph.D. in Biomedicine from the University of Barcelona, Spain where he developed an antisense oligonucleotide approach to study the role of alternative splicing in cell differentiation among neurofibromatosis type I patients, under the guidance of Dr. Eduard Serra . In 2017, Josep started as a postdoctoral researcher at the Genomics Data Lab of Dr. Fran Supek, co-supervised by Dr. Travis Stacker, at the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB), also in Barcelona. His research focused on identifying the causal relationship between mutational processes and cancer phenotypes and on identifying synthetic lethal genetic interactions that can be exploited for lung cancer therapy.
Anusha Chaudhuri, postdoc
Anusha received her Ph.D. in 2021 in the field of RNA biology from the Department of Life Science and Biotechnology, Jadavpur University, India, under the guidance of Prof. Dr. Biswadip Das. During her doctoral studies, she investigated the nuclear RNA degradation and surveillance in Saccharomyces cerevisiae with main focus on the non-coding RNAs and their turnover in the nucleus. In 2021, Anusha started as a postdoctoral researcher in the Team "DNA Replication, Recombination & Genome Stability" supervised by Dr. Sarah Lambert, at the Institut Curie, France, focusing on the crosstalk between the transcription and replication fork repair in fission yeast. She joined Dr. Gabrijela Dumbovic's group in 2023 to further broaden her scientific horizon in the field of RNA biology.
Sakshi Chaudhary, PhD student
Sakshi completed her Master’s in Bioinformatics from Chandigarh University and holds a Bachelor's in Biotechnology from Graphic Era University. Before joining the STARR lab, she worked as a Project Assistant in the group of Dr. Shailesh Kumar at NIPGR, India where she developed a ML and Deep learning based pipeline to validate chimeric fusion transcripts in plants and studied differential alternative splicing and gene expression changes in cardiomyocytes. She also gained experience in computational drug discovery during her Master’s dissertation on Alzheimer’s disease. Skilled in transcriptome analysis, R, Python, Bash, and machine learning. At the STARR lab, Sakshi is excited to explore how oxygen fluctuations affect gene expression, splicing, and RNA localization.
Marta Paladin, PhD Student
Marta holds a Bachelor's degree in molecular biology from the University of Zagreb, Croatia, and a Master's in medical research from Uppsala University, Sweden. During her master's program, she developed a strong interest in RNA biology. As a research intern, she investigated long non-coding RNAs in skin cancer in Dr. Andor Pivarcsi's group. She then joined Dr. Marianne Farnebo's lab at the Karolinska Institutet to work on her master's thesis, where she explored the role of RNA pseudouridylation in stress granules.
Berkay Erdem, Technical assistant
Berkay received his M.Sc. degree in 2021 from Friedrich Schiller University Jena. He completed his Master’s project in The Leibniz Institute on Aging – Fritz Lipmann Institute (FLI) in the group of Prof. Englert where he obtained experience in animal experiments and molecular biology. In his Master’s project he focused on the novel genome editing technology CRISPR/Cas9 using modal organism Danio rerio and achieved the improvement of knock-in efficiency via modifications in the components of CRISPR/Cas9 system. After his graduation, he continued to work as a scientific assistant in the group of Prof. Englert in the Fritz Lipmann Institute
Anjana Ramesh, Technical assistant
Anjana completed a Master's in Molecular medicine from the University of Tübingen. For her master's thesis, she worked in the lab of Dr. Markus Mezger at the Kinderklinik Tübingen. Her work involved establishing a CRISPR/Cas9 editing system and successfully validated it across the BCL11A erythroid enhancer region. Additionally, she applied base editing to model MLD associated mutations in the ARSA gene and assessed its potential for therapeutic correction in patient derived samples.
Alumni
Aybüke Soyvar, Erasmus student
Rebeca Cordellini Emídio
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