KLS Postdoc Award for Elisa Rosati and Malte Rühlemann

February 5, 2021 - 09:45

Elisa Rosati and Malte Rühlemann, junior postdocs at the Institute of Clinical Molecular Biology, were awarded Kiel Life Science KLS Awards for Early Career Postdocs 2020 in the categories Med and Non-Med together with two colleagues from other institutes of Kiel University. The price money for each was 6,000 €.

At Kiel University, Kiel Life Science KLS bundles the expertise from the disciplines of bioinformatics, environmental genetics, agricultural sciences, evolutionary biology and genetic research, plant breeding and animal husbandry, food sciences and evolutionary medicine. The participating research groups are well connected beyond the boundaries of the disciplines and institutes.

The KLS Postdoc Award has been awarded since 2016 in two categories (Med and Non-Med). The requirements for applying are:

  • Research activities must be focused on medical or non-medical life sciences
  • Application max. 3 years after having obtained the doctoral degree (date of document is determinant)
  • Outstanding doctoral thesis
  • Excellent research quality
  • Postdoc must be working in a KLS member institute or clinic

Elisa Rosati won the price for her doctoral project “The T-cell receptor repertoire in Inflammatory Bowel Diseases” and its continuation in the category Med. The project work deals with a very interesting and promising T cell marker which seems to be specific for Crohn's disease but not for Ulcerative colitis. In the next step a further characterisation of this marker by single-cell sequencing is planned. The award money is really welcome to finance this next step. In parallel, this finding has a good potential for clinical use and one follow-up project is going to explore this possibility. 

Malte Rühlemann received the award for his doctoral thesis called "The Interaction of Genetics, Inflammation and the Microbiome in the Human Metaorganism" in the category Non_Med. The aim of Malte's work is to expand microbiome studies by an evolutionary perspective, to answer not only the question about what changes are for example seen in association with a specific disease, but also what these changes imply with regard to western lifestyle, human evolution and in comparison to microbial communties found in our closest living non-human relatives.