I completed my PhD in Prof. Michael Hensel’s laboratory at the University of Osnabrück, where I investigated the intracellular lifestyle and virulence mechanisms of typhoidal Salmonella. As part of my PhD research, I discovered the flagellum-mediated cytosolic motility of intracellular Salmonella Paratyphi A and investigated its significance for the interaction with the host’s cell-autonomous defence mechanisms.

To investigate the mechanisms of cell-autonomous immunity further, I subsequently joined Dr Felix Randow’s research group at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. There, as a Walter Benjamin scholarship holder of the German Research Foundation (DFG), I conducted research into how guanylate-binding proteins (GBPs) recognise and combat bacteria that invade the cytosol of host cells. Using genome-wide CRISPR-Cas9 screens, I investigated cellular factors involved in the regulation and processing of GBPs, as well as in bacterium-induced pyroptotic cell death.

Supported by a return fellowship from the DFG, I subsequently moved to Prof. Caroline Barisch’s research group at the Centre for Structural Systems Biology (CSSB) in Hamburg for an interim project. There, I investigated the detection of membrane damage and the cell-autonomous immune response in Mycobacterium abscessus infections.

Since August 2026, I have been working as a laboratory manager in the Department of Immunology at the University of Oldenburg.

https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6710-9524

I completed a Bachelor’s degree in Biology at the University of Oldenburg and subsequently studied for a Master’s degree in Molecular Biomedicine (also at the University of Oldenburg).

I completed my Master’s thesis in the Department of Gynaecology and Obstetrics, where I focused on immune regulation in pre-eclampsia. For my PhD, I have now moved to the Department of Immunology to continue my work in the field of high-risk pregnancies. As part of my project, we are investigating various immunological markers and characteristics in preterm births.

I have been interested in immunology for a very long time and therefore studied in Magdeburg on the Master's programme in Immunology: Understanding Inflammation. After my Master's thesis, in which I focussed on signal transduction cascades in immune cells, I moved to the University of Oldenburg and started my doctoral thesis in Immunology (School VI, Department for Human Medicine). In my doctoral thesis, I used various animal models for inflammatory and degenerative diseases of the central nervous system and cell culture systems to show that the neurohormone alpha-melanocyte-stimulating hormone appears to have an influence on the integrity of the blood-brain barrier by modulating the expression and function of the tight-junction molecules between the endothelial cells.

Immediately after my doctoral thesis, I started my postdoc (also in immunology). In the postdoc, Bilal will continue the project from my PhD thesis and I will support him. I am also interested in the importance and function of the aryl-hydrocarbon receptor, one of the factors known as a sensor for environmental influences, in autoimmune diseases.

I completed my Bachelor's degree in Medical Laboratory Sciences at Haigazian University in Lebanon.

I then continued my studies at the University of Oldenburg with a Master's degree in Molecular Biomedicine. Recently, I started my PhD in Immunology AG (School VI, Department of Human Medicine). My project focusses on neuroimmunology and deals with the communication between endothelial and immune cells in inflammatory and degenerative diseases of the central nervous system.

I completed my training as a biology laboratory technician at the Food and Veterinary Institute Oldenburg and graduated in 2016. After three more years in the serology department, I then moved to the University of Oldenburg in 2019, where I worked as a TA in human genetics. After my parental leave in 2025, I moved to Immunology, where I have been supporting the team organisationally and experimentally ever since.