TEAM MEMBERS
Effie Bastounis GROUP LEADER
Effie studied Electrical & Computer Engineering at NTUA, Greece followed by a Ph.D. in Bioengineering at UC San Diego on single cell motility and biomechanics. During her postdoc at Stanford she embarked into a journey of exploring how physical forces guide host-pathogen interactions. In her lab at the University of Tübingen she uses interdisciplinary approaches integrating engineering, microscopy and cell biology to understand basic cell (mechano)biology and biomechanics of host-pathogen interactions (CV).
email: effie.bastounis[at]uni-tuebingen.de
Erva Keskin PHD STUDENT
Erva is a PhD student at the Bastounis Lab and investigates the effect of fluid shear stresses and gradients in modulating bacterial infections in endothelial cells. She holds a BSc and MSc in Nanoscience from the University of Tübingen. Previously she worked on characterising bacterial transfer from infected macrophages into endothelial cells.
email: erva.keskin[at]student.uni-tuebingen.de
https://orcid.org/0009-0000-0787-8340
Lara Hundsdorfer PHD STUDENT
Lara is a PhD student at the Bastounis Lab and investigates host-pathogen interactions in epithelial monolayers using an organotypic streching device and biomechanical approaches. She holds a BSc and a MSc in Technical Biology from the University of Stuttgart. Previously she studied the efficacy prediction of apoptosis-inducing drugs (by high-throughput proteomics-based modelling).
email: lara.hundsdorfer[at]uni-tuebingen.de
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-5008-8336
Marie Münkel PHD STUDENT
Marie is a PhD student at the Bastounis lab and investigates the heterotypic interactions between endothelial cells and bacterially-infected macrophages. She holds a BSc and a MSc in Technical Biology from the University of Stuttgart. Previously she worked on screening epigenetic modulators for novel breast cancer treatments.
email: marie.muenkel[at]uni-tuebingen.de
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7655-6716
Raúl Aparicio Yuste PHD STUDENT
Raúl is a PhD student at the University of Zaragoza (MSBE group) co-advised by Prof M. Gómez-Benito and Dr E. Bastounis. His research activity is focused on the study of infective agents at the cellular level by analysing the mechanobiology of host cells in silicons. Previously he worked at the University of Zaragoza GHC group studying hemodynamic flow.
email: raparicio[at]unizar.es
Julio Sanchez Rendon PHD STUDENT
Julio is a PhD student at the Bastounis Lab and investigates how the fluid shear stresses and gradients exerted over endothelial cells alter cell motility and susceptibility to infection. He holds a BS and MSc in Chemical Engineering and Biology from the National University of Colombia and the University of Caldas. Previously, he studied methods for model calibration and validation applied to mathematical models of biological processes.
email: julio.sanchez[at]uni-tuebingen.de
Sinja Niemann MSc STUDENT
Sinja for her MSc will explore host-pathogen interactions in epithelial monolayers utilizing an organotypic stretching device. She is pursuing an MSc in Nanoscience, & earned her BSc in the same field from Tübingen University. Previously, she worked on molecular plant-(gemini)virus interactions
email: sinja.niemann[at]student.uni-tuebingen.de
Felix Romer MSc STUDENT
Felix for his MSC uses devices to modulate fluid shear stresses and explore their effect on the adhesion patterns of (infected) macrophages on vascular endothelial cells. He holds a BSc in Biological Chemistry and is completing his M.Sc. in Molecular Cell Biology and Immunology. Previously, he investigated bacterial infections using advanced cell culture modules like cell stretch devices and stomach organoids.
email: felix.romer[at]student.uni-tuebingen.de
Nadine Oder PHD STUDENT
Nadine is a PhD student investigating the impact of shear stress on endothelial cell mechanotransduction and how that modulated the dissemination of intracellular pathogens.
She holds a BSc and a MSc in Technical Biology from the University of Stuttgart. Previously she studied mechano-regulation of skeletal muscle cell morphogenesis on 3D-printed hydrogels.
email: nadine.oder[at]uni-tuebingen.de
COLLABORATORS
Michal Caspi Tal PRINCIPAL SCIENTIST
Michal Caspi Tal, PhD, is a is a principal scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She leads the Tal Research Group within the Department of Biological Engineering where she studies host-pathogen interactions and diversity of immune responses to tick-borne diseases. Her group is particularly focused on immune responses to infectious disease that have gone awry (more).
Gerald Fuller and Alex Dunn PROFESSORS
Alex Dunn is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Stanford University. His research focuses on understanding how living cells sense mechanical stimuli, with particular interests in stem cell biology and tissue engineering (more). Gerald Fuller is Fletcher Jones II Professor in the School of Engineering at Stanford and between other builds in vitro flow devices to study physiological flow in blood and lymphatic vessels (more).
Maria Gómez-Benito PROFESSOR
María Gómez-Benito ‘s work is focused on computational modeling of fracture and wound healing and designing of multiscale in vitro and in silico platforms for microfluidic devices of tumoral extravasion. More recently she is interested in understanding how cell mechanobiology is altered by bacterial infection through computational models (more).
Peter Loskill PROFESSOR
Peter Loskill is Professor for Organ-on-Chip (OoC) Research at the University Tübingen & the Natural & Medical Sciences Institute (NMI) as well as Vice-Chair of the European-OoC-Society (EUROoCS). He graduated in 2012 from Saarland University with a PhD in Physics and thereafter worked as a postdoc at UC Berkeley. His lab combines approaches from engineering, biology, physics & medicine to generate & apply novel microphysiological tissue models recapitulating complex human biology in vitro (more).
Yi-Ting Yeh RESEARCH SCIENTIST
Yi-Ting Yeh, PhD, is a Research Scientist at UC San Diego working on inflammatory and infectious vascular diseases. She also has vast expertise on vascular biomechanics, nano-fabrication and scanning electron microscopy (more).
Peter Kraiczy PROFESSOR
Peter Kraiczy, PhD is a Professor at Goethe University Frankfurt and studies between other the pathogenesis and immune evasion of the tick-borne bacterial pathogens that cause Lyme disease, Borrelia burgdorferi (more).
lordania Constantinou PROFESSOR
Iordania Constantinou is a Professor at the Institute of Microtechnology at Technische Universität Braunschweig. Her research focuses on the development of novel microsystems for use in the life sciences. Example systems include microfluidics, microsensors, and organ-on-chip platforms (more).
ALUMNI:
Eduardo Bras (Postdoc 2023-2024) - Now working at BlueLab Wasseranalysesysteme GmbH
Mai Wang (PhD candidate, 2022-2023)
Annalena Reuss (PhD candidate, 2021-2022) - Now working at the Zentrum für Datenverarbeitung, at Uni Tübingen
Konstantinos Axarlis (Erasmus+ student, 2021-2022) - Now PhD student at The Francis Crick Institute