Resume

RESEARCH ENVIRONMENT
 

The lab is part of the Biophysics Institute at the Johannes Kepler University Linz. As for the scientific environment, the Institute is led by Prof. Peter Pohl and is comprised by five active senior academic staff, 25 postdoctoral researchers, and 38 doctoral students. Since its beginning, the Institute has been very successful in pursuing interdisciplinary research in areas allied to membrane transport, single molecule signalling, single fluorescent dye tracing, confocal fluorescence correlation spectroscopy, atomic force microscopy, and microfluidics.

The research team has been particularly successful in getting funding from national (Austrian Science Fund—FWF) and international agencies (EU) for at least the last five years, which is reflected by the growing number of scientist at the Institute. The Institute is considered an important training centre in Biophysics and has international reputation attracting scientist from all over the world. Currently, a network of research activities in biophysics, cell biology and molecular biology are coordinated by Prof. Dr. Gerhard Schütz of the Biophysics Institute within the frame of the GEN-AU genomics funding for the “Ultrasensitive Proteomics and Genomics” project.

The institute is housed on the 10h floor of the TNF Building on the main campus of the university. The offices are co-located in a 200 square meter wing of the building. Laboratory areas are located in two different wing areas totalling approximately 500 square meters.  Given the fast expansion of the Biophysics Institute our new home will be in a new building in the Gruberstrasse, Linz.

The lab has benefited from the expertise at the Biophysics Institute in terms of microscopy and microfluidics. Some of the technologies of the lab, especially the bead emulsion amplification (BEA) require this expertise. In particular, knowledge on single molecule detection, microscope scanning technologies, and microfluidics will improve the BEA approach to collect high quality data on recombination activities.

I am also developing a strong network with national researchers located at a reasonable distance. In particular, I have formed a tight link with the Chromosome Biology group at the Max F. Perutz Laboratories at the University of Vienna. This group is leading the research in meiosis in Austria and investigators like Franz Klein are internationally known to be key researchers in recombination.