Room 203
Rosalind-Franklin-Straße 1
07745 Jena
Room 105
Rosalind-Franklin-Straße 1
07745 Jena
Room 202
Rosalind-Franklin-Straße 1
07745 Jena
Room 106
Rosalind-Franklin-Straße 1
07745 Jena
Room 204
Rosalind-Franklin-Straße 1
07745 Jena
Room 103
Rosalind-Franklin-Straße 1
07745 Jena
Room 105
Rosalind-Franklin-Straße 1
07745 Jena
Room 202
Rosalind-Franklin-Straße 1
07745 Jena
Room 203
Rosalind-Franklin-Straße 1
07745 Jena
Room 106
Rosalind-Franklin-Straße 1
07745 Jena
Room 203
Rosalind-Franklin-Straße 1
07745 Jena
Room 204
Rosalind-Franklin-Straße 1
07745 Jena
Room 105
Rosalind-Franklin-Straße 1
07745 Jena
Room 202
Rosalind-Franklin-Straße 1
07745 Jena
Room 202
Rosalind-Franklin-Straße 1
07745 Jena
Room 202
Rosalind-Franklin-Straße 1
07745 Jena
Room 106
Rosalind-Franklin-Straße 1
07745 Jena
Room 105
Rosalind-Franklin-Straße 1
07745 Jena
Room 204
Rosalind-Franklin-Straße 1
07745 Jena
Room 106
Rosalind-Franklin-Straße 1
07745 Jena
Room 204
Rosalind-Franklin-Straße 1
07745 Jena
Room 202
Rosalind-Franklin-Straße 1
07745 Jena
Xiu Jia
Image: Xiu JiaProject: Microbial community coalescence in estuarine systems, integrating experimental, bioinformatic, and modeling approaches to reveal the mechanisms of microbial adaptation to environmental change.
For more information, have a look at Xiu's profile here.
Maria Beatriz Walter Costa
Image: Maria Beatriz Walter CostaProject: Connection between features of prokaryotic genomes and their abiotic environments with Machine Learning and Bioinformatics methods.
For more information, have a look at Bia's profile here.
Pilleriin Peets
Image: Pilleriin PeetsProject: Metabolomics data mining and modeling - Finding ways to describe and compare the chemical space of different biomes, using chemical characterizations like chemical fingerprints instead of final annotation.
Current position: Pilleriin is currently a researcher at the University of Tartu in Estonia. She leads a Chemical Space & Omics groupExternal link, focusing on non-targeted mass spectrometry studies and computational chemistry.
For more information, have a look at Pilleriin's profile here.
Jannick Van Cauwenberghe
Image: Jannick Van CauwenbergheProject: Quantifying the impact of bacteriophages and phage traitson bacterial population structure.
Current position: Jannick is a molecular biologist at the AZ Maria Middelares in Gent, Belgium.
Patrick de Jonge
Image: Patrick de JongeProject: Eco-evolutionary dynamics of human gut phages across a decade of life differs between health-status and population groups
Current Position: Patrick is an Assistant Professor in the Department of experimental vascular medicine at the Amsterdam UMC, Netherlands.
Yuxuan Chen
Image: Yuxuan ChenProject: Impact of soil organic carbon on the virome in soybean-producing area.
Current Position: Yuxuan is a PhD student at the Zhejiang University, China.
Yifei Xu
Image: Yifei XuProject: Associations between microbial features and antibiotic resistance genes presence.
Current position: Yifei is a PhD student at the Nanjing Agricultural University, China.
Katarzyna Moranska
Image: Katarzyna MoranskaProject: Analysis of the uterine, vaginal, and gut microbiome of women with gynecological pathologies.
Current Position: Katarzyna is a PhD student in the Laboratory of Human Biological Development and Disease at Adam Mickiewicz UniversityExternal link, Poznan, Poland.
Ibtissam Nejjam
Image: Ibtissam NejjamProject: Antimicrobial resistance in feces and slurry from dairy cattle, comparing different livestock production systems.
Current position: Ibtissam is a PhD student at the Centro de Investigación y Formación Agrarias, Spain.
Rabia Tabassum
Image: Rabia TabassumProject: Viromes in low free-energy systems.
Current position: Rabia has now the position of a technical assistant at the VEO Group!
Prof. Heyde Francielle Carmo França
Image: Heyde Francielle Carmo FrançaProject: Prediction of abiotic factors of bacterial habitats using machine learning techniques
Current position: Heyde is currently a professor at the Federal Institute of GoiásExternal link in the undergraduate program in Computer Science and in the postgraduate program in Agricultural Sciences.
For more information, have a look at Heyde's profile here.
José Luis López Arcondo
Image: José Luis López ArcondoProject: Metabolic modeling and carbon use efficiency in soils
Paper: José Luis López , Arista Fourie, Sanne WM Poppeliers et al. (2023): Growth rate is a dominant factor predicting the rhizosphere effectExternal link . ISME J. doi: 10.1038/s41396-023-01453-6External link
Current position: José is now a Postdoc at the VEO Group!
Susanna R. Grigson
Image: Susanna R. GrigsonProject: inferring bacteriophage functions from protein-protein interactions
Current position: Susie is a PhD student at Flinders UniversityExternal link in Australia.
For more information, have a look at Susie's profile here.
Dan Liu
Image: Dan LiuProject: Predicting virus-host interactions with transitional learning
Stage Researcher of the VIROINF ConsortiumExternal link.
Current position: Dan is a PhD student in virology at MRC-University of Glasgow Center for Virus ResearchExternal link (UK). Her main focus is on predicting virus-host interactions using protein language models.
Daniel Garza
Image: Daniel GarzaProject: Modeling human gut bacterial life strategies
Paper: Daniel Rios Garza , Didier Gonze, Haris Zafeiropoulos, Bin Liu, Karoline Faust (2023): Metabolic models of human gut microbiota: Advances and challengesExternal link , Cell Systems Perspective Volume 14, ISSUE 2 , P109-121, doi: 10.1016/j .cels.2022.11.002External link
Current position: Daniel is a junior scientist in the INRAEExternal link PROSEExternal link near Paris, France.
Cédric Lood
Image: Cédric LoodProject: Bacterial defense systems
Paper: Dann Turner, Andre N. Shkoporov, Cédric Lood . et al. (2023) : Abolishment of morphology-based taxa and change to binomial species namesExternal link , Arch Virol 168 , 74, doi: doi.org/10.1007/s00705-022-05694-2External link
Current position: Cédric is a postdoctoral fellow of the FWOExternal link . He is currently working at the Lab of Gene Technology, KU LeuvenExternal link (Belgium). His main focus in on phage-bacteria interactions in the clinical context of phage therapy against ESKAPE pathogens.
Adéla Finstrlova
Image: Adéla FinstrlovaProject: Phage defense systems
Papers: to be done
Current position: Adéla is working in Brno, Czechia in the Laboratory of Molecular Diagnostics of MicroorganismsExternal link as a researcher. Her main focus is on phage-host interaction, she primarily studies bacteria from genus Staphylococcus and their phages.
Yasas Wijesekara
Image: Yasas WijesekaraProject: A machine learning pipeline to identify and characterize novel viruses in metagenome data
Current position: Yasas is an Early Stage Researcher at the VIROINF ConsortiumExternal link. He is currently enrolled for a PhD in medical informatics at the medical faculty of the University of GreifswaldExternal link (Germany). His main focus is on developing machine-learning methods for identifying viruses in metagenome and genome sequencing data.
- Anna-Maria Kästner: MSc student, Friedrich Schiller University, Germany. Period: since April 2026. Topic: Functional Evaluation of an AI-Generated Phage.
- Richa George: MSc student, Friedrich Schiller University, Germany. Period: since October 2025. Topic: Rhizobia–phage interactions across
the soil-to-nodule gradient.
- Samira Joy Quanz: MSc student, Friedrich Schiller University, Germany. Period: since October 2025. Topic: Ecological mechanisms in iridescent bacteria.
- Mohit Kumar: online. Period: since July 2025. Topic: Phage-encoded antibiotic resistance genes.
- Pim van Helvoort: BSc student, Leiden University of Applied Sciences, the Netherlands. Period: September 2024 - June 2025. Topic: Microverse Mapper website.
- Sirsha Debnath: online. Period: February - September 2024. Topic: Extrametabolome of metabolically cooperating yeast communities.
- Rene Zschoche: MSc student, Friedrich Schiller University, Germany. Period: October 2023 - September 2024. Topic: Traits of keystone Vibrio phages.
- Tia Wünschmann: MSc student, Friedrich Schiller University, Germany. Period: July 2024. Topic: In vitro phage production.
- Melanie Wahl: MSc student, Friedrich Schiller University, Germany. Period: May 2024. Topic: Phage-induced rhizobia evolution.