A portrait of our newly minted IMCBio PhD researchers
This week we have the portraits of Lisa Josefine, from Germany, and Nicolas Fournier, from France.
Lisa Josefine Winter – Joao Marques’ team, IBMC
Lisa Josefine Winter finished a Bachelor Degree in General Biology in Flensburg (Germany). For the Master´s programm she went to Hamburg (Germany) to specialize in Infection Biology. To have an internatioal education she did an exchange semester at the University of Vienna (Austria) and an exchange semester in Stockholm (Sweden).
At the beginning of her Master, she started to work as a student assistant at the renowned “Bernhard-Nocht-Institute for tropical medicine” in Hamburg. Here, she developed a fascination in mosquito-borne diseases and focuses her reseach in the unterstanding of mosquito biology and different abiotic and biotic factors involved in the arbovirus transmission.
Since September 2024, Lisa is a first year IMCBio PhD student and joint the team of Joao Marques at the IBMC-CNRS in the department of “Innate immunity in insect models”. During her PhD she would like to investigate the olfactory system in Aedes aegypti linked to the vector competence for Zika and dengue viruses.
For Lisa Josefine, to be selected for the IMCBio programm “means to be able to continue working with mosquitoes and viruses and to be internationally connected with other scientists in this growing field of medical entomology and arbovirology”.
Nicolas Fournier – Hubert Becker’s team & Pascale Romby’s team, GMGM & IBMC
Nicolas Fournier started studying biology at the University of Strasbourg in 2019, where he joined the French-german Bachelor program that is proposed between the University of Saarland and the University of Strasbourg. During his bachelor he had the opportunity to do different internships, which helped he discern his interests. He started working on tRNA in the lab of Pr. Dr. Mario Mörl in Leipzig, which awoke his strong interest for this molecule, that he continue to carry in his PhD. To try and expand his horizon, both in terms of technique and model organisms, he then joined the lab of Pr. Dr. Katrin Philippar, where he did his bachelor thesis titled “Determination of FAX1 interactome under cold stress using TurboID”.
After graduating, Nicolas joined the Biologie et Génétique Moléculaire Master at the University of Strasbourg, as well as the IMCBio Graduate school. During these 2 years, he joined the lab of Pr. Dr. Hubert Becker, where he first worked on aminoacyl-tRNA trasnferases and their non-canonical locations, before moving to the subject that became his PhD project, bacterial aminoacyl-tRNA transferases. During his Master, Nicolas also had “the great opportunity to join the lab of Pr. Dr. Osamu Nureki at the University of Tokyo, thanks to the support of the IMCBio program, which allowed me to discover the field of structural biology”.
For his PhD project, Nicolas is working on membrane modifications in pathogenic bacteria that are mediated by aminoacyl-tRNA transferases. This is a joint project between the Labexes MitoCross and NetRNA. He is supervised by Pr. Dr. Hubert Becker and by Dr. Stefano Marzi. This project brings together a lot of the different interests Nicolas has developed over the beginning of his scientific career, since it allows he to work on both biochemical and structural aspects of this tRNA mediated process.
“I chose to continue with the IMCBio programm for my PhD, add Nicolas, because it allows me to continue furthering my career in an international and interdisciplinary setting, while also giving me access to great training opportunities.”
