Dr. Philipp Lemke: A new Dr. rer. nat. from our group

Another occasion for sparkling wine: Today, Philipp Lemke became Dr. Philipp Lemke. After having successfully defended his doctoral thesis earlier this week, Philipp was awarded the title of Dr. rer. nat., the German equivalent of a PhD in Natural Sciences, by the Faculty of Biology of our University. Friends and family had come to celebrate with him and us. After receiving his MSc in BioSciences, Philipp had first worked for some time as a research associate to support Anne Vortkamp in finalising her doctoral thesis, while she was lobbying for the Industrial Exhibition which we staged during “our” International Chitin and Chitosan Conference ICCC 2015 in Münster - the organisation of which was also heavily supported by Philipp. He then started his doctoral project in association with our Indo-German “2+2” project CuChi-BCA on copper-loaded chitosan nanoparticles for plant disease protection. Supported by his Master student Lena Jünemann who also defended her thesis this week, he systematically investigated the synergistic effects of chitosan oligomers and polymers which Maha Attjioui had previously identified in her PhD thesis with us, bringing this work to the point where we can finally publish it. Perhaps more importantly, he opened up the world of systematic transcriptomic analyses for our group - with surprising and promising results which are not going to be revealed here. The manuscript is almost ready for submission! Philipp is going to continue for a few more months with us, hopefully again supported by Lena, so that the two of them can finalise some more work for publications. Truly successful theses - thank you!