Members
Angela Hancock
Max Planck Research Group LeaderPostdoctoral Researchers
Emmanuel Tergemina
Postdoc
Yulia (Yarkhunova) Kreye
Postdoctoral ResearcherPhD students
Shifa Ansari
PhD student
Yasin Kaya
PhD Student
Sofia Rodriguez Pacheco
PhD Student
Sophie-Asako Xerri
PhD studentTechnical Assistance
Diana Perea Castro
Technical Assistant
Former Lab members
Itzel Aislinn Aguirre-Pérez
Itzel came for an internship from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico as an undergraduate in 2018. She worked on quantifying trait variation in East African A. thaliana accessions and is now a Master’s student at INECOL in Mexico.
George Alskief
George was an intern in the laboratory from 2018-2019 studying plant architecture adaptation along altitudinal gradients. George is now a technical assistant at the University of Cologne.
Bemnet Bizuayehu
Bemnet completed her Bachelor’s degree at Addis Ababa University in Ethiopia, and worked as a researcher in the lab of Sileshi Nemomissa at the Institute of Botany. Bemnet is now working on her Master’s at the University of Cologne. Her projects in our lab involved ecophysiology and adaptation in Ethiopian populations of A. thaliana and A. alpina.
Arun Durvasula
Arun came from Jeff Ross Ibarra’s lab at the University of California at Davis as a summer student. He stayed for about a year as a Research Assistant to investigate the evolutionary history of Arabidopsis thaliana from Africa. Arun went on to earn his PhD with Kurt Lohmueller and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard with David Reich and Alkes Price. He is now an Assistant Professor at the University of Southern California.
Ahmed Elfarargi
Ahmed Elfarargi completed his Masters at Wageningen University in the Netherlands. With us, he worked on the genetic basis and evolutionary history of drought tolerance and resistance in Cape Verde islands. He is now a postdoctoral fellow with Tom Juenger at the University of Texas at Austin.
Pádraic Flood
Pádraic was formerly a postdoctoral researcher in the lab working on quantitative traits in natural populations of Arabidopsis thaliana from Ireland and East Africa. Pádraic is the Founder and CEO of Aardaia.
Andrea Fulgione
Andrea was a PhD student in the lab from 2015-2017 (co-advised with Joachim Hermisson) and stayed on for a postdoc. He worked on population history and adaptive evolution in African Arabidopsis thaliana. In July 2020, he started a group leader position in the Coupland Department at the MPIPZ working on population genetics in Arabis alpina.
Katinka Giesen
Katinka worked as a student assistant in the laboratory in 2017. Katinka studied seed traits in Cape Verde Arabidopsis populations.
Mehmet Göktay
Mehmet obtained his MSc degree from Izmir Institute of Technology. In our group, he worked on assembling Arabidopsis thaliana genomes, identifying structural variants in population-level data, and examining their evolutionary histories. He is currently a Research and Development Scientist at Agilent Technologies.
Victoria Gryschock
Victoria was a chemistry undergraduate who worked as a student assistant in the laboratory in 2016. Victoria worked primarily to characterise heterochromatin compaction phenotypes natural Arabidopsis thaliana populations.
Nina Küppers
Nina was a technician in the lab from 2016 until 2022. Nina supported the lab in too many ways to list here. She is now working as a technician in the von Korff lab at the Henrich Heine University in Düsseldorf.
Gulmairam Sultanova
Gulya worked as a student assistant and Master’s intern in the lab on mapping life history variation and fitness in Cape Verde Islands Arabidopsis populations. She completed her Masters with Roosa Laitinen at the Vikki Plant Science Center in Finland.
Célia Neto
Célia obtained her MSc from the University of Porto working in human population genetics. In our lab, Célia studied the genetic architecture of quantitative traits (photosynthetic efficiency and flowering time) in Arabidopsis thaliana populations from Cape Verde Islands. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher in Paul Neve’s lab at the University of Copenhagen.
Weixuan Ning
Weixuan was an Erasmus intern in the laboratory in 2018. Weixuan examined variation in flowering time, vernalisation requirement and photosynthetic parameters in a set of Afroalpine Arabidopsis thaliana accessions. He is now a postdoc at Iowa State University with Jonathan Wendel.
Kalyani Tatineni
Kalyani conducted her Masters research in the lab, working on identifying structural variants in Arabidopsis thaliana long read (Nanopore) data.
Mamunur Rashid
Mamunur completed his Masters research at the University of Helsinki. He worked with us in 2022-2023 to assess variation in mineral element tranport in Arabidopsis thaliana natural populations and mutants. He is now a PhD student at Justus Liebig University in Giessen.
Paula Unger
Paula joined us as a research assistant after completing her Bachelor’s degree in Agronomy at the University of Bonn and a research internship with the International Potato Center (CGIAR/CIP) in Peru. She is now a PhD student in the CECAD program (Beyer Lab) at the University of Cologne.
Denitsa Vasileva
Denitsa was a master’s student intern in the laboratory in 2018. Denitsa worked mainly on understanding adaptation along altitudinal gradients.
Johan Zicola
Johan examined DNA methylation variation and heterochromatin compaction in Arabidopsis thaliana natural populations. Dr. Zicola is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Scholten Crop Plant Genetics Group at the Georg-August-Universität in Göttingen.