VEO and MGX at the Senckenberg Museum

Team

The members of the Viral Ecology and Omics Group within the Cluster of Excellence "Balance of the Microverse" at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany.
VEO and MGX at the Senckenberg Museum
Image: Roos Brouns

  6. Fofanov, Mikhail

    Doctoral researcher Professorship of Viral Ecology and Omics

    Room 105
    Rosalind-Franklin-Straße 1
    07745 Jena

    Mikhail Fofanov
    Image: Mikhail Fofanov

  7. Geliashvili, Natia

    Doctoral Researcher Professorship of Viral Ecology and Omics

    Room 202
    Rosalind-Franklin-Straße 1
    07745 Jena

    Portrait of Natia Geliashvili
    Image: Natia Geliashvili

  16. Rozwalak, Piotr Jaroslaw

    Doctoral Researcher Professorship of Viral Ecology and Omics

    Room 105
    Rosalind-Franklin-Straße 1
    07745 Jena

    Portrait of Piotr Rozwalak
    Image: Piotr Rozwalak

Former members

Maria Beatriz Walter Costa | October 2022 - September 2025

Project:

For more information have a look at Bia's profile here 

Pilleriin Peets February 2023 - January 2025

Pilleriin Peets

Pilleriin Peets

Image: Pilleriin Peets

 

Project: 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. 

Jannick van Cauwenberghe | April 2022 - August 2024

Jannick Van Cauwenberghe

Jannick Van Cauwenberghe

Image: Jannick Van Cauwenberghe

 

 

Project: Quantifying the impact of bacteriophages and phage traitson bacterial population structure.

Visitors

Katarzyna Morańska | July 2024, March and June 2025

Katarzyna Moranska

Katarzyna Moranska

Image: Katarzyna Moranska

 

Project: 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.

Yifei Xu | September 2024 - August 2025

Project: Antibiotics resistance carriage in bacterial genomes.

Current position: PhD student, Nanjing Agricultural University, China.

Ibtissam Nejjam | November 2024 - February 2025

Project: Topic: Antibiotic resistance in cattle farms.

Current position: PhD student, Centro de Investigación y Formación Agrarias, Spain.

Yuxuan Chen | January - December 2024

Project: Impact of soil organic carbon on the virome.

Current position: PhD student, Zhejiang University, China.

Rabia Tabassum | October 2023 - March 2024

Project: Viromes in low free-energy systems.

Heyde Francielle Carmo França | February 2024 - March 2024

Prof. Heyde Francielle Carmo França

Prof. Heyde Francielle Carmo França

Image: Heyde Francielle Carmo França

Project: 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. Read more about Heyde and her work here .

José Luis López | June 2023 - October 2023

José Luis López

José Luis López

Image: José Luis López

Project: 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!

Susie Grigson | September - December 2023

Susanna R. Grigson

Susanna R. Grigson

Image: Susanna R. Grigson

Project: inferring bacteriophage functions from protein-protein interactions

Current position: Susie is a PhD student at  Flinders UniversityExternal link in Australia. Read more about Susie and her work  hereExternal link .

Dan Liu | June 2023 - September 2023

Dan Liu

Dan Liu

Image: Dan Liu

Project: Predicting virus-host interactions with transitional learning
Stage Researcher of the VIROINF ConsortiumExternal link. She is currently 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 | January - July 2023

Daniel Garza

Daniel Garza

Image: Daniel Garza

Project: 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 | October 2022 - March 2023

Cédric Lood

Image: Cédric Lood

Project: 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 | January - March 2023

Adéla Finstrlova

Adéla Finstrlova

Image: Adéla Finstrlova

Project: 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 Rajitha Wijesekara | February - May 2022

Yasas Wijesekara

Yasas Wijesekara

Image: Yasas Wijesekara

Project: 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. 

MSc and BSc students

- 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 antibiotics resistance genes.

- Pim van Helvoort: BSc student, Leiden University of Applied Sciences, the Netherlands. Period: September 2024 - June 2025. Topic: Microverse Mapper website.

- Samira Joy Quanz: MSc student, Friedrich Schiller University, Germany. Period: since October 2025. Topic: Ecological mechanisms in iridescent bacteria.

- Rene Zschoche: MSc student, Friedrich Schiller University, Germany. Period: October 2023 - September 2024. Topic: Traits of keystone Vibrio phages.

- Melanie Wahl: MSc student, Friedrich Schiller University, Germany. Period: May 2024. Topic: Phage induced rhizobia evolution.

- Tia Wünschmann: MSc student, Friedrich Schiller University, Germany. Period: Juli 2024. Topic: In vitro phage production.

- Sirsha Debnath: online. Period: February - September 2024. Topic: Extrametabolome of metabolically cooperating yeast communities.

- Mohit Kumar: online. Period: since July 2025. Topic: Phage-encoded antibiotics resistance genes.