Katharina Janneck successfully completed her bachelor’s degree in our laboratory. She submitted her work in October with the topic: The influence of early life stress on the heart – investigation on the rat model. We wish her all the best for her future.
We welcome Julia, who recently joined us for her medical doctoral thesis. Julia’s research focus will be on bipolar disorder. Specifically, she will investigate the connections between different brain regions and their alterations in hedonic behavior in our rat model for bipolar disorder.
Kristo finished his master’s thesis in September entitled: 
“Poly (I:C) mouse model of schizophrenia: The role of peripheral inflammation”. We congratulate him warmly and wish him all the best for his future.
This year’s annual meeting of the German Society for Bipolar Disorders took place from September 14th to 16th in Bielefeld.
Members of our working group were also actively participated and e.g. presented posters. We are very proud that Sarah Starosta, Kirsten Schmerder and Patrick Reinhardt won three of the six poster prizes. A nice end to the year for our laboratory. We hope that next year will be as successful as well.
In August we can congratulate twice. Maike Kneist and Monique Jäger successfully completed their bachelor’s degree. Maike’s bachelor’s thesis is entitled “Poly (I:C) animal model of schizophrenia – involvement of the gut-brain axis”. Monique submitted her thesis entitled “Molecular Correlates of Altered Mating Behavior in an Animal Model of Bipolar Disorder”. We wish both of them all the best for their future.
We are very pleased to welcome Dr. Sarah Starosta to our working group. She has been researching and living in America for the last 7 years after doing her PhD at Ruhr- University. More precisely 4 years in New York at the Cold Spring Harbor laboratory and another 3 years at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. Her research focus was the effects of cancer on brain function and mental illness. With the help of the DFG returnee grant, Sarah can get a fresh start for her professional future here in Germany. We are happy to give her the opportunity to do this in our laboratory, as we share the interface lies in the interest in the interaction between the immune system and mental illnesses. We look forward to a great cooperation. See more
We are particularly pleased to congratulate Sevim Isparta on passing her PhD exam on July 7th, 2023 in Ankara, Turkey. The title of her doctoral thesis is “Behavioral and genetic evaluation of effect of prenatal stress on funcional cerebral asymmetries in rats”. All the best from our side for this great achievement.
Malin Hedtstück has passed her master’s degree with the title „Microglial alterations and their impact on neurogenesis in a poly (I:C) mouse model of schizophrenia“. We congratulate her and wish her all the best for her future.
We welcome two new master students to our group.
Kristo`s master’s project aims to examine maternal immune activation in a Poly I:C mouse model of schizophrenia. Precisely, he will investigate how the interaction between the brain and gut microbiome in tandem with the activation of microglia might be responsible for the generation of schizophrenia-like behaviors. For that purpose, he will measure the concentrations of pro- and anti-inflammatory cytokines in the selected bloodserum mice samples and thus evaluate the validity of the aforementioned interaction.
Selin is interested in the effects of early life stress on later brain development, particularly maternal stress. To this end, she will utilize molecular techniques to investigate the impact of maternal stress on the rat hippocampus.
We are looking for a new PhD student to enrich our group. The focus of the doctoral thesis is on bipolar disorder in animal models and optogenetic methods. If you find yourself here and would like to start your doctoral thesis in autumn 2023, just follow the link below for more information.