People of the Valenzano Lab

We are a team of international scientists working to answer open questions in the fields of evolutionary biology of aging and microbiome research.

senior scientist

drawing Kathrin Reichwald manages the Valenzano lab, from animal licences, to group coordination and support of scientific projects.
drawing Paulius Grigaravicius is a biophysicist with expertise in cytometry, imaging in the context of genomic instability, and his work is aimed at molecular phenotyping of killifish pre-clinical models.

research engineer

drawing Farzana Shamim-Schulze isolates and cultures our killifish-derived microbial isolates. Farzana works on the puzzling role of phages in microbes isolated from young and old killifish.

lab techs

drawing Ivonne Heinze is supporting projects revolving around genomics, molecular cloning, and general lab organization.

guest scientists

drawing Allen Mavuru is a field ecologist interested in using eDNA technology to study species conservation and trace species interactions in natural habitats. Allen is currently based in the molecular field lab in the Gonarezhou National Park in Zimbabwe.

student interns

drawing Jhanya Baskaran studies the trans-generational effects of male reproductive aging in the naturally short-lived turquoise killifish.
drawing Leonhard Kuhlmann studies the evolutionary basis of brain aging in killifishes. For this project, Leo uses histology and biochemistry to characterize hallmarks of brain aging in a genetic cross.

postdocs

drawing Dennis de Bakker studies the genetic causes of naturally-occurring neurodegeneration in African killifishes using genomics, genome editing, histology and experimental anti-aging interventions.
drawing Silvia Cattelan studies male reproductive aging in turquoise killifish. Silvia is an experimental biologists performing experiments in captive killifish cohorts.
drawing Alina Ryabova studies immune aging in killifish. Alina is an experimental biologists, using omics technologies to understand co-evolution between gut microbiome and immune system during aging.
drawing Flavio Costa is a microbiologist and his work unravels the interaction between the gut microbiome and aging in turquoise killifish.
drawing Alessandro Del Re is a pharmacologist and his work is aimed at finding microbial mediators of host systemic health.

graduate students

drawing Jens Seidel is interested at the interplay between immune aging and microbiome composition in killifish and mice. He develops molecular methods to study how the host immune system shapes the commensal microbiome. Jens’ work involves molecular biology, genome editing and genomics.
drawing Gabriele Morabito works at the interface between genome instability and immune aging - he studies genome evolution and immune system-microbiome crosstalk during aging.
drawing Martin Bagic develops numerical models of genome evolution, exploring how demography and ecology shape the evolution of the genetic variants that cause aging across species in nature.
drawing Sam Kean studies how microbiota establish themselves, persist and change in composition throughout host life. Sam’s work involves fieldwork, genomics, bioinformatics and microbiology.