My main focus of research is on cross-phenotype molecular-genetic studies for several chronic inflammatory disorders (CID) including Crohn’s disease, psoriasis, primary sclerosing cholangitis and ulcerative colitis. Joint analyses of large genetic and multi-omics data sets across CID and neighboring indications (e.g. coronary heart disease) provide an opportunity to derive genetic risk signatures as well as definitions of communalities, but also particular (“private”) etiologies that are relevant only for a certain disease or complication.

Another key interest is the development and application of bioinformatics methods for inflammation research.Many research projects suffer from long computation times for bioinformatics applications. A reconfigurable computing architecture based on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) has the advantage of being several magnitudes faster than a regular large, high-performance compute cluster (HPC), while at the same time being significantly smaller in size (comparable to a regular desktop computer) and consuming a lot less energy. Our work serves as an interdisciplinary research project between design artists and researchers. Together with experts for FPGA architectures (Department of Technical Computer Science in Kiel) and graphic user interface design (the Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts and Design in Kiel) we are developing user-friendly graphic front ends for FPGA systems. We aim to set up a test infrastructure based on Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGA), which allows for ultra-fast and simple processing of genetic data and its subsequent interpretation.