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Research associate Quantitative Genetics

Dr. Delphine van Inghelandt
Building: 22.07
Floor/Room: 01.053
+49 211 81-13396


Delphine is french and studied agronomy in Nancy (FR). She made her Ph.D. in Quantitative Genetics and Plant Breeding at the University of Hohenheim (DE). She worked 16 years as a plant breeder in a plant breeding company in France and Germany before she came to the HHU. She is interested in plant breeding, population and quantitative genetics, genome-wide prediction, and trait improvement in maize, barley, and potato

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Prof. Dr. Benjamin Stich
Building: JKI-ZL
+49 38209 45 201


Benjamin completed his Ph.D. in 2007 at the Chair of Applied Genetics and Plant Breeding at the University of Hohenheim, where he studied linkage disequilibrium in maize. In 2008, he started an independent research group on Quantitative Crop Genetics at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne. Between 2012 and 2016, Benjamin was working as senior maize breeder for the French seed company Limagrain being responsible for developing early grain maize hybrids for Europe. Since 2016 he is full professor for Quantitative Genetics and Genomics of Plants at the Heinrich-Heine-University. His interest is to develop genetic tools and methods that facilitate the breeding process.

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Research associate

Dr. Asis Shrestha
Building: 22.07
Floor/Room: 01.054
+49 211 81-13397


Asis comes from Nepal and he studied MSc in agriculture resource management at University of Bonn. Later, he joined Plant Breeding group in Bonn for his PhD. During PhD study, he applied forward and reverse genetics approach to understand the genetic regulators of proline accumulation and drought stress adaptation in barley. His interest lies on the analysis of causal role of genes controlling quantitative traits in crops.

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Postdoctoral Researcher

Dr. Suresh Venkata Bonthala
Building: 22.07
Floor/Room: 01.054
+49 221 81-13397


Bonthala Venkata Suresh comes from India and completed his PhD at School of Computer Sciences at The University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK. During his PhD, he analyzed transcriptional dynamics of Bambara groundnut under low-temperature stress condition and identified low-temperature stress associated genes and gene modules. Later he joined Plant Genome & Systems Biology (PGSB) group at Helmholtz Zentrum München, Munich, Germany. During his stay at PGSB, he applied various computational methods to study the pan-genome of Barley.

In his present position at our group, Suresh will mainly work on an EC-funded project “Rewiring photorespiration using natural and synthetic pathways to sustainably increase crop yield (Acronym: GAIN4CROPS)”. As part of the project, he will assemble and annotate several Asteraceae species using both short and long-read sequencing technologies. Please log on to http://gain4crops.eu/ for more details about GAIN4CROPS.

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Dr. Senem Koc

Senem comes from Turkey and studied statistics in Samsun (TR). She made her PhD in Biostatistics at the Ondokuz Mayis University & Hacettepe University. During her PhD, she worked on different Machine Learning algorithms for genetics data. She has been working on machine learning and big data aspects since her Erasmus time in 2015. Her interest is on usage of mathematical models and algorithms for genetics. Her focus is on unbalanced data sets and missing value problems.

PhD student

Aashu
Building: 22.07
Floor/Room: 01.089
+49 211 81-13426


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PhD student

Christopher Arlt
Building: 22.07
Floor/Room: 01.081
+49 211 81-13417


Biology master's student at HHU, focusing on plant research with a special interest in bio-informatics. Main emphases in the past included topics like systems biology, biotechnology, plant physiology, evolutionary biology, mathematical modeling, and statistical analysis. Currently working on the Master thesis: "Presence/absence variation in the barley genome - validation and phenotypic consequences", which is about the characterization and validation of presence/absence variation (PAV) in a diverse set of spring barley genotypes. Subsequently, investigating the possibility to link the validated structural variation data to phenotypical differences. This will be achieved mainly by PCR validation, association studies, and additional data analysis.

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Nadia Baig


Nadia is from northern areas of Pakistan. Before landing in Prof. Stich’s group as a  Ph.D. candidate, she worked as a research assistant in CGSBL lab stationed at LUMS University Pakistan. During her stay there, she worked on De novo genome assembly of two pakistani mango varieties. She holds a masters degree in Bio-informatics from COMSATS University Pakistan. Her Ph.D. research centers on development of genomic tools for potatoes aiming to recast the conventional ways of breeding and genome selection process.

After the completion of her degree program, she aspires to go back to her country and to motivate the young females to work in the field of Bioinformatics.

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PhD student

Francesco Cosenza
Building: 22.07
Floor/Room: 01.081
+49 211 81-13417


Francesco is from Palermo, Italy. He received his BSc in Agronomy from the University of Palermo and then moved to the University of Bologna where he obtained the MSc in Agricultural Sciences with a curriculum focused on plant biotechnology. After a research experience in England, focused on the study of necrotic mutants, he joined our group, where he is currently pursuing his PhD.

His field of research includes the study of both coding and non-coding sequence in barley genome. With regard to the coding DNA, his objective is to identify and characterize genes responsible for the control of quantitative traits involved in production performance. While regarding the non-coding region, his research is focused on the study of transcription factor binding sites with the aim of obtaining a genome-wide knowledge of their locations and to understand how their polymorphisms affect gene expression.

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PhD student

Yanrong Gao
Building: 22.07
Floor/Room: 01.081
+49 211 81-13417


Yanrong is from China. She received her BSc degree from China Agriculture University. During her bachelor studies, she got interested in plant breeding and genetics, then she went to Wageningen University and received a MSc degree majored in Plant breeding and Genetic resources. In her Ph.D. project, she focuses on investigating the genetics of photosynthesis-related parameters and yield-related traits in barley to contribute to global food security.

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PhD student

Marius Alexander Kuehl
Building: 22.07
Floor/Room: 01.089
+49 211 81-13417


Since his bachelor's degree in biology at the HHU, Marius has increasing interest in bioinformatics and quantitative genetics and genomics in particular.
After developing a tool for fine-grained mutation simulation, he is now assessing methylation variation in barley within the frame of his master's project.

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PhD student

Amelie Lea Kok
Building: MPIPZ
+49 221 5062-384


During her Bachelors studies in Quantitative Biology at HHU and the University of Cologne, Amelie developed a special interest for bioinformatics, quantitative genetics and plant sciences. She has a particular interest in deepening her knowledge of bioinformatics and utilising it towards the improvement of crop plants. For her master and PhD she is now working on developing novel approaches to locate causative genetic variants and improve GWAS trait prediction.

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PhD student

Twinkal Hiten Lapasiya
Building: 22.07
Floor/Room: 01.089
+49 211 81-13426


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Phd student

Alessio Maggiorelli
Building: 22.07
Floor/Room: 01.089
+49 211 81-13426


In the last year of his bachelor’s degree in Düsseldorf, Alessio discovered his passion for bioinformatics and chose all his upcomming courses as well as his bachelor thesis topic to be about bioinformatics. Later then, through his job as a biometrican/data scientist analysing clinical trials using R, he discovered his passion for statistics. For his master thesis, Alessio combines both interests and will focus on phenomic selection on potatos which is a relatively new breeding approach similar to genomic selection except that genotyping is replaced by spectral data.

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PhD student

Maria Schmidt


Maria has a background in plant sciences, molecular biology, plant breeding, and microbiology with Bsc and MSc from the Universities of Rostock and Kiel. In her Ph.D. project, she focuses on the identification and characterization of a resistance gene against the barley yellow dwarf disease in maize.

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PhD student

Po-Ya Wu
Building: 22.07
Floor/Room: 01.081
+49 211 81-13408


Po-Ya received a dual bachelor degree in Agronomy and Finance and a master degree in Biostatistics from National Taiwan University, Taiwan. During her master study, she focused on the issue of assessing the hybrid performance of pumpkin by genomic selection. The main goal of her Ph.D. project is to develop new statistical models for genomic selection adapted to tetraploid potato and to optimize the potato breeding scheme using genomic selection.

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Technical assistant

Stephanie Krey
Building: 22.07
Floor/Room: 01.081
+49 211 81-13408


Stephanie works as a technical assistant in our group. After her apprenticeship, she studied biology in Bonn. Afterwards she decided to continue labwork and to support the projects of her colleagues. Her main focus is RNA and DNA extraction from plants like Brassica, maize, potato and barley. 

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Technical assistant (parental leave)

Anja Dominique Kyriacidis
Building: MPIPZ
+49 221 5062-490


Anja graduated from Rheinische Akademie Köln in 2016 and started working as a technical assistant for our group directly after that. She is involved in the organization and cultivation of our maize and barley experiments.

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field engineer

Konstantin Shek
Building: 22.07.01
Floor/Room: 081
+49 211 81-13408


Konstantin was born in Astana, Kazakhstan. He completed his bachelor's degree at the Czech University of Agriculture in Prague. He obtained his master's degree in crop production at the same university in 2014. As part of his thesis, he carried out experiments about genotype and environment effect on yield and quality of colored flesh potato tubers. From 2015 to 2022 he worked as a breeding technician at Saatzucht Steinach. There he gained a lot of experience and knowledge in plant breeding, field trials, technology and methods of analysis of forage and lawn grasses.

Julian Föhse
Building: 22.07.01
Floor/Room: 089
+49 211 81-13426


Julian initially focused on the topic of evolution in his biology studies. In his bachelor thesis he dealt with the evolution of plant cell wall components. Since evolution research also has a lot to do with database work and programming, he developed a strong interest in these methods. For his master thesis, he therefore wanted to combine his knowledge of plant genetics with bioinformatics. His current project is the programming and further development of a plant breeding database.

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MSc student

Joel Milek


Before Joel went to HHU University, he trained as a biological-technical assistant. Even then, he liked genetics and statistics the most. During his bachelor's degree, he became interested in bioinformatics and decided to write his bachelor's thesis at the Institute of Quantitative Genetics and Genomics of Plants. In his bachelor thesis, he investigated barley root traits under field conditions and ecological strategies. Now he is investigating the genetic architecture of panicle length and potential gene loci for quantitative traits.

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MSc student

Kathrin Thelen
Building: 22.07.01
Floor/Room: 089
+49 211 81-13426


Kathrin received her bachelor’s degree in Quantitative Biology at the Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf in cooperation with the University of Cologne.  During her studies she focused on the field of bioinformatics and statistics, which she liked very much.  In her master thesis, she can deepen her knowledge of these methods and combine it with new insights in plant genetics, as she focuses on genomic prediction and genome-wide association mapping in potato.

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Gadi Vogeler

Gadi studied Biology in Cologne where he completed his Bachelors Degree in plant physiology and secondary metabolism. For his Master degree he was brave enough to leave Cologne for Düsseldorf and never regereted it since they have Carnival here too. While his Master studies he advanced his knowledge of plants, molecular methods and statistical analysis. Today he works with barley looking for promising gene loci for quantitative traits.

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MSc student

Anjali Walpola Mudalige Dona
Building: 22.07
Floor/Room: 01.081
+49 211 81-13417


Anjali is from Sri Lanka. She completed her bachelor's degree in Plant Biotechnology at the University of Colombo. For her bachelor's thesis, she worked on urea deep placement technology to reduce urea input in rice cultivation. With her developed interest in field experiments and working towards food security and sustainable agriculture, she decided that plant breeding is the most exciting research area to carry out her MSc and PhD studies. Currently, she is studying for her MSc with a focus on quantitative trait loci related to variation in spike length and spikelet number in barley. The end goals of her PhD studies are the fine mapping of selected quantitative trait loci and identification and validation of candidate genes.

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