Doctoral students

The ±340 active doctoral students of HBIGS constitute the PhD student Faculty. The Student Assembly convenes once a year to discuss matters relevant to the students, and elects the student speaker and the vice speakers, respectively, for one year. The speaker attends the Executive Board meetings.
The current HBIGS PhD student speakers are:
Kim-Loreen Carlstedt (Lanzer group; Dept. Inf. Dis.); kim-loreen.carlstedt@uni-heidelberg.de
Soria Gasparini (Lanzer group; Dept. Inf. Dis.); soria.gasparini@med.uni-heidelberg.de
Anezka Kramna (Kräusslich group; Dept. Inf. Dis.); kramnaa.lab@gmail.com

Peer-reviewed publications distinguish any scientist. They indicate scientific competence, diligence and the ability to work as a member of a larger team. Publications often are the ticket to the next career step, especially in academia but increasingly also in industry. Since 2007, HBIGS doctoral researchers have published more than 2,500 peer-reviewed scientific articles.

Since 2007, more than 900 HBIGS doctoral candidates have obtained their PhD degree from Heidelberg University. Given that alumni serve as ambassadors of HBIGS and as role models for our doctoral researchers, we wish to maintain close ties with them. To this end, HBIGS has built a professional career network of alumni, to actively promote the current PhD students, participate in their training, and help them find adequate career perspectives. We also invite alumni to career events and student-organized retreats as speakers to share their professional experience and expertise. Our networks on social media further serve as contact points for information and non-scientific support.
We want to highlight just a few HBIGS alumni who continued their careers in academia and beyond after having obtained their PhD degree with HBIGS (in alphabetical order).

Lukas Bunse (Platten group, DKFZ) is Senior Physician & Group Leader “Cell Therapy Team” at DKFZ and University Hospital Mannheim
Ahmed Eltokhi (Rappold group, Inst. Hum. Gen.) is Assistant Professor at Mercer University School of Medicine, Columbus, GA, USA
Daniel Hübschmann (Eils group, Bioquant & IPMB) is Head of research group “Computational Oncology” at NCT, Heidelberg
Yinhua Jin (Edgar group, ZMBH) is Assistant Professor at Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China
Lisa Kastner (Luke group, ZMBH) is European Patent Attorney at Freudenberg Group, Weinheim
Nicole Kilian (Lanzer, group Dept. Inf. Dis.) is Assistant Professor at California State University, Chico, CA, USA
Sebastian Kruss (Spatz group, Inst. Biophys. Chem.) is Professor at Ruhr-University, Bochum
Eva Kummer (Bukau group, ZMBH) is Associate Professor at University of Copenhagen, Denmark
Theresa Manful Gwira (Clayton group, ZMBH) is Professor at University of Ghana, Accra
Balca Mardin (Schiebel, group ZMBH) is Head of Target Discovery and Research at Merck KGaA, Darmstadt
Julianne McCall (Blesch group, University Hospital Heidelberg) is CEO of California Council on Science and Technology at UC Davies, CA, USA
Frauke Mücksch (Kräusslich group, Dept. Inf. Dis.) is Schaller Research Group Leader at University Hospital, Heidelberg
Saravanan Palani (Pereira group, COS) is Assistant Professor at Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, India
David Müller-Stanmore (Backs group, University Hospital Heidelberg) is Senior Publisher at Springer Nature Group, Heidelberg
Zeribe Nwosu (Dooley group, University Hospital Mannheim) is Assistant Professor at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA
Oskar Staufer (Spatz group, Inst. Biophys. Chem.) is Emmy Noether Research Group Leader at INM-Leibniz Institute for New Materials, Saarbrücken
Özgür Tataroğlu (Brunner group, BZH) is CEO of Virostem Biotechnology, Istanbul, Turkey
Erika Tsingos (Wittbrodt group, COS) is Assistant Professor at Utrecht University, The Netherlands
Marie-Luise Winz (Jaeschke group, IPMB) is Junior Professor at Johannes-Gutenberg-University, Mainz
Jing Yan (Bading group, IZN) is Senior Director of Reserach at FundaMentalPharma GmbH, Heidelberg
Cathleen Zeymer (Reinstein group, MPImF) is Professor at Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU), Munich

Patrick van Nierop Sanchez (I. Lohmann group, COS) & Kaisa Pakari (Wittbrodt group, COS): Otto-Schmeil Award (2025)
Lukas Bunse (Platten group, DKFZ): Heinz-Maier-Leibnitz Prize 2025; Life Sciences Bridge Award of the Aventis Foundation (2023); Nachwuchspreis des Württembergischen Krebspreises (2017)
Varun Venkataramani (T. Kuner group, Inst. f. Anatomy & Cell Biol): Hella-Bühler Prize (2025)
Martin Würtz (Schiebel group, ZMBH): Nikon Young Scientist Award by the German Society for Cell Biology (DGZ) and Nikon Germay (2024)
Matilde Bertolini & Kai Fenzel (Bukau group, ZMBH): Otto-Schmeil Award (2022)
Ioannis Sarropoulos (Kaessmann group, ZMBH): International Birnstiel Award for Doctoral Research in Molecular Life Sciences (2022)
Erika Tsingos (Wittbrodt group, COS): KlarText-Preis für Wissenschaftskommunikation; Klaus Tschira Foundation (2020)

HBIGS has gained international visibility and attracts an international doctoral faculty. HBIGS has also been quite successful in acquiring funding for doctoral networks that link Heidelberg University with other universities and research institutions. Moreover, HBIGS is an appreciated partner in a number of national and international collaborations, e.g. in the organization of international summer schools to promote exchange of PhD students and lecturers. Due to these activities our doctoral students are exposed to different scientific cultures, they present their data to scientific audiences, learn from and collaborate with renowned research groups, and explore future job opportunities at collaborating laboratories and institutions.