People

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

Senior Scientist

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

Research Engineer

Farzana Shamim-Schulze 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 Technicians

Ivonne Heinze Ivonne Heinze is supporting projects revolving around genomics, molecular cloning, and general lab organization.
Shaymaa Azawi Shaymaa Azawi is our killifish transgenic expert and helps generate killifish lines as pre-clinical models of neurodegenerative diseases, with a special focus on ALS.

Postdocs

Silvia Cattelan Silvia Cattelan studies male reproductive aging in turquoise killifish. Silvia is an experimental biologist performing experiments in captive killifish cohorts.
Alina Ryabova Alina Ryabova studies immune aging in killifish. Alina is an experimental biologist using omics technologies to understand co-evolution between gut microbiome and immune system during aging.
Flavio Costa Flávio Costa is a microbiologist and his work unravels the interaction between the gut microbiome and aging in turquoise killifish.
Siqi Liu Siqi Liu is a microbiologist with a focus on microbial genomics and evolution.
Priti Malik Devi Priti Malik Devi studies the impact of infection and infectious diseases on the microbiome.

Graduate Students

Jens Seidel Jens Seidel is interested in 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.
Martin Bagic Martin Bagic develops numerical models of genome evolution, exploring how demography and ecology shape the evolution of genetic variants that cause aging across species in nature.
Sam Kean Sam Kean studies how microbiota establish themselves, persist, and change in composition throughout host life. Sam’s work involves fieldwork, genomics, bioinformatics, and microbiology.
Ruchitha Byrohalli Ruchitha Byrohalli studies how wild killifish populations adapt to their environment, exploring the role of hybridization in adaptation, speciation, and aging.