Linh Dang specialises in computer science with a passion for machine learning methods and their applications to Bioinformatics. His PhD research at the University of Göttingen focused on applying supervised machine learning to study protein’s properties such as DNA-binding sites or protein-protein interaction sites. Additionally, he is also interested in graph-based inferences to investigate how protein’s conformations change. In his free time, he likes watching Ted talks and science shows. His hobby is mountain hiking.

Natalia Ruiz is a postdoctoral fellow of the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation at the Institute of Agricultural Law of the University of Göttingen. She is a Colombian legal scholar and consultant on issues related to international development, gender equality, indigenous rights and environmental justice. She completed her PhD in Law from Colombia’s National University and educational and professional experience in South Korea, China and the United States. Her current research work, “An agrarian adjudication theory for small farmers and indigenous populations in Colombia”, focuses on aspects of rural reform in Colombia following the 2016 Peace Accord. Natalia loves bicycling with her family, progressive rock music, collecting shoes, gourmet food and travel.  

Ilka Vosteen is a behavioral ecologist who focuses on searching and orientation behavior of insects. She did her PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, followed by a three years postdoc project in the Laboratory of Entomology at Wageningen University (NL). In October 2019, she joined the Agricultural Entomology group at the University of Göttingen, where she explores how our knowledge on insect behavior can be applied to make pest control in agricultural systems more sustainable.

Ilka thinks that the postdoc phase is very challenging, because of short-term projects and the necessity to move between universities in different cities and countries to pursue an academic career. An active exchange with postdocs in similar situations can help scientists to deal with the challenges of this critical career phase and Ilka hopes to foster this exchange as an active member of the Postdoc Network. During her time off, Ilka enjoys hiking in the surroundings of Göttingen, gardening on her balcony, cooking delicious meals and reading.
 

Kamila Svobodova is a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow at the University of Göttingen. Through her project CESMINE, she explores the complexities of socio-economic rehabilitation after small-scale mining in Germany, Denmark, and the Czech Republic. She also holds an honorary role at the Centre for Social Responsibility at the University of Queensland. Her expertise is in understanding how important ‘environmental psychology’ is when designing mine closure and post-mining landscapes. Kamila is a Landscape Engineer and she holds a Ph.D. in Architecture and Urbanism. Besides her academic career, Kamila worked as an urban planner and participated in various regional development planning projects. She is an outdoor and travel enthusiast. During her time off, you usually find her hiking or climbing. She enjoys traveling, meeting new people, and exploring different cultures.

Dr. phil. Lisa Maria Franke is specialised in the fields of  Arabic and Islamic Studies as well as in Social and Cultural Anthropology. Currently, she works as assistant professor in the field "Anthropology of Islam" at the Institue of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Göttingen. She carries out research on individual religiosities and non-conformist perspectives in Alexandria as part of the ERC project "Private Pieties: Mundane Islam and New Forms of Muslim Religiosity: Impact on Contemporary Social and Political Dynamics" (2016-2022). She received her PhD in Arabic Studies from the University of Leipzig in 2011. Here, she focussed on martyrdom, gender constructions and social discourses in Palestine. Subsequently, at the University of Cologne, she dealt with the religious, social and political content of colloquial poetry in Egypt and published on the symbolism in modern interpretations of the end times. Her research interests include everyday history, eschatology, belief and identity, discourse analysis, and gender studies; processes of individualisation, religious transformations and social dynamics; the use of language in various forms of texts. She graduated from the University of Bayreuth and the School of Oriental and African Studies (London). She taught at the Universities of Leipzig, Cologne and Goettingen as assistant professor.

Marthe Klöcking is an observational geodynamicist and data scientist. She coordinates the Digital Geochemical Data Infrastructure (DIGIS) project that is modernising the geochemical database ‘GEOROC’: with the goal to maximise access to and re-use of research data collected over the past decades, and so to improve the research infrastructure in Germany and worldwide.
When she has time for research herself, Marthe exploits the chemical fingerprints of volcanic rocks to study the origin of magmas and the internal structure of continents in places such as Yellowstone. She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge (UK) and has worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Macquarie University and the Australian National University (Australia). Marthe has experience attracting her own research funding and working with industry and government partners.
She loves the outdoors, especially while hiking, cycling or rowing. She enjoys challenging her perceptions and inherent biases through travel, culture and exchange with people from all backgrounds and stages of life.

Tobias Kahland did his PhD research at the German Primate Center - Leibniz Institute for Primate Research (DPZ) and the Central Institute for Experimental Animals (CIEA) in Kawasaki, Japan, about transgenesis and gene modification in the common marmoset. After some time away from academia he is back working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Deutsches Primatenzentrum in the Platform Degenerative Diseases, focusing on Assisted Reproductive Technologies  (ART) and genetic modification in the common marmoset.
Outside of work he likes to spend time at the sea for scuba diving or kite surfing and explore the outdoors while hiking or cycling.

Muhammad received his PhD in 2018 from the Institute of Developmental Biology, University of Cologne. In October 2018, he joined the University of Göttingen, Department of Evolutionary Developmental Genetics as a postdoctoral researcher. His research focus is on development of transgenic tools for spatiotemporal control of RNA interference (RNAi) for gene function analysis. Muhammad found the Göttingen Campus Postdoc Network a great platform for postdoctoral researchers, not only to take part in their regular activities for information exchange but also to attend special events for career development.
 

Tobias Pöhnl is a Food Technologist, currently working at the group of Quality and Sensory of Plant Products at the Agricultural Faculty of the University of Göttingen. He obtained his PhD at the University of Hohenheim (Stuttgart) in 2019. His academic interest is the technological and sensorial value of primary and secondary plant metabolites as well as their synthesis and accumulation in agricultural systems. The analysis and identification of those compounds by chromatographic methods demands most of his time. Currently bitter compounds in the context of sustainable production of tasty food for the future are of particular interest.

When he is not working you can find him outdoors running or cycling, maybe at a marathon nearby. Holidays are best spent hiking or mountaineering anywhere between Norway and the Austrian Alps. For relaxation, he enjoys good food, wine and movies or a board game with friends.

Kibrom Sibhatu, from Eritrea, is an Agricultural and Food Economist interested in the dynamic linkages of human welfare with ecosystem services in response to global challenges, including deforestation, poverty, food insecurity, hunger and malnutrition, and climate change. His research experience encompasses projects in the Global South, where he researched the link between farm-level agricultural biodiversity and the quality of diets in smallholder households.

His current research focuses on smallholder land-use change and human welfare in Southeast Asia, particularly in Sumatra, Indonesia. This work is under the EFForTS project -  a Collaborative Research Center  (CRC 990) funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The CRC 990 investigates the ecological and socioeconomic effects of the significant transformation of forests towards a cash crop-dominated rubber and oil palm plantation landscape, focusing on smallholder systems.

Outside work, he is a dedicated runner, plays football, and spends much time reading. He is also active in organizing events for and supporting refugees in Göttingen.

At the University of Göttingen (and other universities in Germany), foreign nationals are increasingly occupying vital (albeit short-term) early-career academic and research positions. However, international staff (and their partners) are often faced with distinct challenges, including language barriers, immigration status, and short-term work contracts. As a Göttingen Campus Postdoc Committee member, he is keen to help address such challenges in collaboration with other team members.

Stefanie is an art historian working on late antique and medieval religious art. She is a researcher and lecturer at the Art History Department of the University of Göttingen. At the moment, Stefanie’s research focus is on theological reflections on images at times of heresy. She also works on the collecting of religious material culture in 19th and 20th century museums and universities. Stefanie received her DPhil at the University of Oxford in 2019, where she wrote a dissertation on the subject of baptismal art and identity construction in the late antique Western Mediterranean. In the book, she investigates the surprising practice of 5th and 6th century Christian communities to baptize in spaces in which Roman pre-Christian visual and material culture was presented as completely Christian. Until 2018, Stefanie worked as a curator at the British Museum. During this time, she was the lead-curator of the exhibition Imagining the Divine. Art and the Rise of World Religions (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 10/2017-2/2018) that showed parallels, differences and interconnections in the development of early Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Islamic, and Jewish imagery in the first millennium. Before coming to Göttingen, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Art History department of the University of Bern, and spent some time as a fellow at the RomanIslam Center of the University of Hamburg.

Mark Bates is a bio-physicist working in the Department of Optical Nanoscopy at the Institute for Nanophotonics, Göttingen (IFNANO).  Mark's research area is super-resolution fluorescence microscopy, with a particular focus on the use of optical microscopes to resolve the nano-scale architecture of protein complexes.  Originally from Canada, Mark earned his doctorate in Applied Physics at Harvard University (USA) before moving to Göttingen to work at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, and later at the IFNANO.  Mark was an EMBO Postdoctoral fellow, and his research was awarded the 2010 GE & Science Prize for young life scientists, and the Method of the Year (2008) from Nature Methods.  When he’s not in the lab, Mark is a travel and hiking enthusiast, and enjoys winter sports such as skiing, skating, and curling.

Dingsu Feng works as a Postdoc at the Geosciences Centre, geochemistry and isotope department of the University of Göttingen, hired by University of Cologne. Her research focuses mainly on the stable oxygen isotope analysis on PO4. She did her PhD at the University of Göttingen on the topic “Triple Oxygen Isotope analysis of Bioapatite”, namely the tooth enamel, which were used as a new proxy to reconstruct the Paleo CO2 concentration. Currently, she continues the PO4 research on soil and plants.

In her free time, she is either in the gym or playing badminton with her beloved ASC4 team players. In her holidays, she is always traveling overseas, meeting new people, getting to know different cultures and exploring the wonderful world. 

Constanza, originally from Chile, was awarded by the National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (CONICYT) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). She obtained her Ph.D. from the Department of Developmental Biology of the Georg-August-University in 2021. Afterward, she joined the Department of General, Visceral and Pediatric Surgery as a postdoctoral fellow of the Dorothea Schlözer program at the University Medical Center, Göttingen. Her research focuses on Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, using in-vitro models (patient-derived organoids) to facilitate pharmacological screening studies and identify novel therapeutic targets. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, cooking, doing sports, and dancing salsa.

Jimena Davila Gallesio is a molecular biologist interested in RNA life. In 2019 she obtained her PhD degree from the University of Göttingen for her work studying RNA helicases and ribosome biogenesis. Currently she works as a postdoc at the Department of Molecular Biology of the University Medical CenterGöttingen (UMG). As a postdoc she stepped a bit away from the lab bench: she is mainly responsible for lab management, student supervision and teaching. In this role, but also as a member of the Postdoc Committee, she takes the chance to assist colleagues and peers in their everyday work. She puts special effort in creating and maintaining healthy and productive work environments.
When she is not in the lab, she enjoys meeting with friends for coffee, reading and knitting colorful things.