We are a truly international and interdisciplinary team. We come from over 10 different countries and have backgrounds ranging from biology and medicine to physics, mathematics and arts.

Jörg Menche

Jörg studied physics in Germany and Brazil and obtained a PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces in 2010. He worked as a postdoc in the group of Albert-László Barabási at Northeastern University and Harvard Medical School in Boston, before starting his own research group at the CeMM Research Center for Molecular Medicine in Vienna in 2015. In 2020 he became full professor at the University of Vienna where he holds a shared appointment at the Center for Molecular Biology (Max Perutz Labs) and the Faculty of Mathematics. His interdisciplinary team combines backgrounds ranging from biology and bioinformatics to medicine, physics, mathematics & arts. The broad ambition of his group is to use tools and concepts from network theory to elucidate the complex machinery of interacting molecules that constitutes the basis of (patho-)physiological states. Major areas of interest are network-based approaches to rare diseases, understanding the basic principles of how perturbations of biological systems influence each other, and developing novel Virtual Reality (VR) based technologies for analyzing large genomic data.

Current Team Members

Anna Hakobyan

Predoctoral Fellow

Anna studied bioinformatics in Copenhagen and Yerevan. She joined our group in 2018 as a PhD student. In her main project she analyzes mutational signatures to better understand how different mutagenic processes interact with each other. 

Celine Sin

Postdoctoral Fellow

Celine studied computational and systems biology at the UCLA and did her PhD with Angelo Valleriani at the Max-Plack-Institute for Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam. She joined us as a PostDoc in October 2017. In her main project she investigates how gene regulatory networks are rewired during development and diseases associated processes. 

Chloé Bucheron

Master Student

Chloé studies physics and computational science at the University of Vienna. She joined our group in 2021. In her Masters project she is looking under the hood of network-based prioritization algorithms. 

Christiane Hütter

Predoctoral Fellow

Chris joined our group in 2020 as a Guest Scientist. She studied Architecture and Bioengineering in Vienna and Glasgow. Her main focus in the lab is to redefine network visualisation methodologies and to develop novel approaches for complex data representation, operating at the interface of art, science and technology.

Daniel Malzl

Predoctoral Fellow

Daniel studied biotechnology and bioinformatics in Vienna and joined the group in 2020 as a PhD student. His main project revolves around how interindividual differences in gene expression of patients underly the same disease phenotype and how this can be used for optimization of diagnosis and treatment.

Felix Müller

Data Scientist

Felix studied physics in Berlin where he also obtained his PhD in the area of stochastic processes and non-linear dynamics. He joined our group in 2016 as a data scientist and develops software tools to analyze and interpret large network datasets.

Joel Hancock

Predoctoral Fellow

Joel studied mathematics in Oxford and joined our group as a PhD student in 2017. In his main project he is trying to formulate a rigorous mathematical framework for connecting network theory and data science. 

Julia Guthrie

Postdoctoral Fellow
Julia studied molecular bionics and molecular medicine in Budapest, Uppsala and London. She did her PhDin the area of rare diseases and network medicine in the group of Kaan Boztug at CeMM in close collaboration with us. She is now working on network-based drug repurposing.
 

Karl Riepl

Master Student
Karl studies mathematics at the University of Vienna. He joined our group in May 2022. In his Masters project he is investigating the dynamical properties of a peculiar class of circular networks.
 

Loan Vulliard

Predoctoral Fellow

Loan studied bioinformatics in Lyon, Daejon, Copenhagen and Montpellier. He joined our group as a PhD student in 2017. In his main project he is investigating how genetic and drug-induced perturbations interact with each other. 

Martin Chiettini

3D Artist

Martin studied Digital Arts at the University for Applied Arts in Vienna and joined our lab in 2019. He is taking care of our IT infrastructure and developing Virtual Reality applications.

Mathilde Meyenberg

Predoctoral Fellow

Mathilde studied biology and biochemistry at the Warren Wilson College in the US and joined CeMM in 2018 as a PhD student in the group of Joanna Loizou. In her main project she investigated the effects of diet on the genome. She joined our team in 2022.

Salvo Danilo Lombardo

Predoctoral Fellow

Salvo studied Medicine and Surgery in Catania, Italy. He joined our group as a PhD student in 2019. In his main project he investigates the impact of exposures during pregnancy using network medicine tools.

Sebastian Pirch

3D Artist

Sebastian is a 3D artist and designer who studied digital art at the University for Applied Arts in Vienna. He joined the group in 2017 and works on interactive virtual reality visualizations of large datasets.

Till Oblau

Master Student
Till studies bioinformatics at the University of Vienna. He joined our group in May 2022. In his Masters project he is developing new tools for interfacing with our VR platform. 
 
 

Varun Sharma

Predoctoral Fellow

Varun studied systems biology in San Francisco and Zürich. He joined CeMM as a PhD student in 2021 and is a joint member of our team and the lab of Christoph Bock. 

Alumni

Bobby Malhotra

3D Artist

Bobby is a media artist born and raised in Tyrol with roots in India. His artistic focus is on virtual worlds and augmented/mixed reality art experiences. He joined CeMM's social media team in 2019.

Eugenia Iofinova

Guest Scientist

Jen has a background in mathematics, which she has applied to many problems including financial modeling, healthcare data, and natural language processing. Her main research interest is the application of cutting-edge methods in machine learning and model interpretability to problems in biology. She helped us build our first VR platform prototype. She is now working on her PhD at the IST Austria in the group of Dan Alistarh.

Isabel Kaltenbrunner

Master Student

Isabel studied molecular biology at the University of Vienna and did her Master thesis in our group. In her project she designed and tested a new drug library optimized for high-throughput high-content imaging screens. She is now working on new vaccines in the pharmaceutical company Themis Bioscience.

Iva Buljan

Summer Intern

Iva studied molecular biology in Zagreb and Heidelberg. She joined us for a summer internship in 2021 to learn more about network medicine. She is now a PhD student in the group of Andre Rendeiro at CeMM in Vienna.

Jovana Lazarevic

Summer Intern

Jovana studied biomedical engineering in Novi Sad. She joined us for a summer internship in 2019 to explore rare genetic diseases using our Virtual Reality platform.

Lucia Marchionne

Summer Intern

Lucia studies mathematics at the University of Vienna. She joined us for a summer internship in 2022 to learn more about network-based approaches in data science and biomedical applications. 

Markus Youssef

Master Student

Markus studied mathematics at the University of Vienna and did his Master thesis in our group in close collaboration with Herbert Edelsbrunner at the IST Austria. He discovered and described a new class of biological networks characterized by a global ring structure. He is now doing his PhD at the University of Lausanne. 

Michael Caldera

Predoctoral Fellow

Michi was the first PhD student in our group, he joined us in 2015. He studied molecular Biology in Vienna, Milan and Zürich. In his main project, he combined high-throughput cell imaging with machine learning and network theory to elucidate fundamental principles of drug-drug interactions. He is now working as a Senior Data Scientist at the biotech start-up Proxygen.

Raphael Bednarksy

Master Student

Raphael studied molecular biology and bioinformatics at the University of Vienna. He did his Masters thesis in our group in 2021. He is now a PhD student at CeMM in the group of Christoph Bock. 

Pisanu Buphamalai

Predoctoral Fellow

Pisanu —Ize— studied physics, bioinformatics and systems biology in Bangkok, Helsinki, Stockholm, London and Aachen. He joined our group in 2016 as a PhD student. In his main project, he developed a multi-layer network framework to investigate rare diseases. He is now a Research Scientist at the biotech company Exscientia.