Student Profiles

As practically my whole family, down to my great-grandfather, were/are either physicists or chemists, I also started to study for my degree in Chemistry in October 2004 at the University of Kiel on the Baltic Sea in Germany.
In my first year abroad in Lund (Sweden) in 2007, I did my Master Thesis in the groups of Prof. Ola Wendt and Prof. Ulf Ellervik. In the Wendt group my work focused on the optimisation of the organo-metallic Miyaura-Suzuki reaction and the detection of different yields using GC-MS. My work in the group of Prof. Ellervik was based on protecting group chemistry on xylosides. The work with xylosides and the potential anti-cancer properties of their different derivatives drew my particular interest into biological chemistry. After my return to Kiel, I joined the group of Prof. Thisbe K. Lindhorst in order to do my Diploma thesis and to work at the interface of biology and chemistry. My research was based on the synthesis and testing of ligands for the bacterial lectin FimH.
Despite the interesting and successful research in Kiel, my time in Sweden encouraged me to leave the country again for my PhD. Thanks to Prof. Lindhorsts recommendation I got the possibility for a Marie-Curie fellowship in the group of Prof. Sabine Flitsch in Manchester.
After a break of four months, in which I backpacked through Africa, Central and South America, I started my PhD in the MIB in September 2009.
In the welcoming Flitsch group I focus on microarray chemistry. Over the past ten years microarrays have become a powerful tool in glycochemistry due to their biological applications such as in lectin binding assays.
My research focuses on the use of goldarrays which are based on self assembled monolayers (SAMs). These SAMs are formed out of carboxyl terminated thioalkanes, where carbohydrates are covalently attached onto the array via an amide bond. The gold arrays have the advantage of making the detection of products possible using MALDI-ToF-MS and surface plasmon resonance (SPR).
I am interested in every kind of interaction of enzymes or lectins with different saccharides, peptides or glycans on the microarray.
There are many different aspects of doing a PhD in Manchester that makes it worth while. Those things are for example collaborations with different groups in the MIB, UK and Europe alongside with opportunities to go to various different conferences. 
Everyone who is interested in any kind of collaboration or just has ideas or questions is most welcome to come and find me or to send me an email.