Poster Symposium 2023

First doctoral candidate in the SP BioSciences successfully completed her doctoral thesis!

Kristin Vöing has successfully completed the BioSciences Structured Doctoral Programme, defended her thesis, and is now our first alumna. The programme, which is offered by the Faculty of Biology at Münster University, is designed to support young scientists in the field of life sciences and provide them with excellent training.
The Structured Doctoral Programme BioSciences is a three-year programme that offers participants a broad range of subject-specific and interdisciplinary qualifications. It includes both theoretical and practical training units that help doctoral candidates develop their research skills and advance their scientific careers.
Kristin Vöing did her doctoral project in the research group of Professor Hermann Josef Pavenstedt, at Münster University Hospital. The group deals with kidney and high-pressure diseases and rheumatology. In her work, Ms Vöing investigated the relevance of the small GTPase Rab7 for different renal cell types. The title of her thesis is: Functional analysis of the small GTPase Rab7 in podocytes and cystic kidney disease.
With the successful completion of her doctorate, Kristin Vöing can now proudly call herself – and be called! - Dr. rer. nat.
We congratulate her and wish her all the best for the future!

At this point, we would also like to congratulate Brice Nzigou Mombo, who also recently completed his doctorate in the Structured Doctoral Programme BioSciences. Unlike Ms Vöing who performed her doctoral project from start to end within our BioSciences programme, Mr Nzigou Mombo started his work at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz and then moved to Münster with his supervisor, Prof. S. Wegner, where he then joined our SP BioSciences halfway through his thesis. We also wish him all the best for his future.

To both Kristin and Brice: we are looking forward to hear from you, to learn where your future will lead you - do stay in touch!
 

1st poster symposium of the SP BioSciences

PhD students hosted the 1st poster symposium of the SP BioSciences – Showing not only their skills as junior scientists but as science managers too, our PhD representatives Jos Cox and Lara Siebert-Kuss together with a dedicated team of PhD students, namely Laura Schmitz-Gielsdorf, Jan-Ole Niemeier, Helen Fuhrmann, Lucia Sesena Carrillo, Juliette Delahaye, Raquel Guerrero, Ke Zheng and Sayani Sarkar initiated and organized the 1st Poster Symposium of the SP BioSciences that took place on 5th October at Münster Castle. 

Besides the scientific and social exchange among 100 PhD students and PIs in a nice atmosphere, one of the highlights were three awarded poster prizes each worth 100€ sponsored by BioLegend.

The symposium ended with an appealing, thought-provoking keynote lecture by Cedric Engels, CEO of TWENTYTWO Film, on the topic of “Science communication in the age of post-truth”, co-sponsored by the CRU326.

We thank everyone who helped realizing this event, including our sponsors and all PhD students who scientifically contributed with their excellent poster presentations.

Giulia Ravagnan's PhD research focuses on genome reduction in Paenibacillus polymyxa. For this purpose, she uses different CRISPR-Cas based strategies to free the genome from irrelevant regions such as phage DNA. In addition, she is working on the deletion of transposons to generate a robust production strain (chassis organism) for the production of various industrially relevant products. She is completing her doctorate as part of a BMBF-funded project (Polymore; FKZ 031B0855A) at the Institute of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology at the chair of Prof. Jochen Schmid.