About

Education

2018 – 2020: MSc in Bioinformatics, FH Campus Wien, AT | Master thesis: "Improving predictions of genetic adaptation to climate change with deep learning" (supervisor: Moisés Expósito-Alonso, Carnegie Science, USA)

2006 – 2010: PhD in Life Sciences, Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology GmbH, AT | PhD thesis: „Molecular control of secondary growth initiation in the Arabidopsis stem“ (supervisor: Thomas Greb)

2005: Summer student, Yale University, Dept. of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology, USA (supervisor: Vivian Irish)

1999 – 2005: Diploma in Biology | Botany (aka MSc), University of Vienna, AT | Master thesis: "Floral development in Tetrachondraceae and Oleacaea – two families of basal Lamiales” (supervisor: Anton Weber)

Professional experience

2013 – ongoing: Scientist, project leader & bioinformatician (since 2021) at the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, AT

2015 - 2016: Interremistic scientific head of the Business Case "DNA banking & genotyping services“, AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, AT

2010 – 2013: Sales Manager Applied Science, Roche Diagnostics, AT

2006: Scientific assistant, University of Vienna, Dept. of Systematic and Evolutionary Botany, AT

Selected projects and collaborations

2022 – 2025: Project leader of “PredictBeetWeevil - Data- and model-based prediction of sugar beet weevil occurrence”, funded by the government of Lower Austria within the d4agrotech initiative

2022 – 2025: Project leader of “WheatVIZ - Towards breeding of drought-tolerant winter wheat via genomics, phenotyping, machine learning, and advanced digital visualization”, funded by the government of Lower Austria within the d4agrotech initiative

2018 – 2024: Project partner of COMET K1-center "FFoQSI – Austrian Competence Centre for Feed & Food Quality, Safety and Innovation”, funded by the FFG

2018 – 2021: Project partner of “CharAccess I & II - Genomics and phenomics of Austrian scarlet runner bean accessions with the focus on heat tolerance”, funded by the BMVIT & STMK

2017 – 2020: Project leader of "BeetStore - Transkriptomics und Metabolomics for the characterisation of the storability potential in sugar beet”, funded by the FFG (Proj. Nr. 6914314)

2015 – 2018: Project partner in “Food legumes for enhanced food and nutritional security, systems productivity and profitability of smallholder farmers in Ethiopia and Uganda”, funded by Austrian Development Agency (ADA)

2015 – 2018: Project leader of “ViolinCode - Decoding a violin’s origin based on molecular genetic techniques”, funded by the FFG (Proj. Nr. 5574985)