"Limited forms most beautiful"

From the diverse life forms we observe on Earth, a question often arises: what factors generate biodiversity?

My curiosity lies on the other side of the coin: what factors limit biodiversity? One factor is the process of development that creates these organisms in the first place. But exactly how - and are findings in model systems generally shared across Earth’s diverse life forms?

Since my wet-lab skills are not so advanced, I have decided to explore these questions on a computer.

I am grateful to Prof. Susana Coelho who directs the Dept. Algal Development and Evolution at the MPI for Biology for hosting me as a PhD candidate in Bioinformatics to explore these fundamental biological questions in brown algae, which evolved complex multicellularity independently from animals, plants and fungi. I also thank Prof. Hajk-Georg Drost who leads the Computational Biology Group for the expertise in evolutionary transcriptomics and the opportunity to contribute to open source projects. Aside from my direct research projects, I am generally interested in bioinformatics, developmental biology and systems-thinking in biology.

2021- Max Planck Institute for Biology (Tuebingen) PhD candidate
2020-2021 Dept. Zoology (Cambridge) MPhil
2017-2020 Dept. Life Sciences (Imperial College London) BSc.

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