Chondamma Bollachettira

Chondamma was born and raised in a hill town of southern India. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in Life Sciences, she obtained a master’s degree in Biotechnology and Bioinformatics from Bengaluru, India. For her thesis, she worked on developing a customized CRISPR-Cas-based toolkit for gene editing in Plasmodium falciparum. To further pursue her love for research, she joined the Villaseñor lab as a PhD student in August 2022. Here, she will study various aspects of epigenetics and chromatin biology regulating gene expression. Apart from science, she enjoys baking, reading, playing badminton, and board games.

email:

chondamma.bv[at]bmc.med.lmu.de

Lara Kopp

Born and raised in a village of the Bavarian Forest, Lara decided that she needed a break from the land of “Bier and Lederhosen”. She left Bavaria to obtain a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Biomolecular Engineering at the Technical University of Darmstadt. Quickly discovering her love for the field of Chromatin and Epigenetics, she returned to Bavaria for an external thesis placement at the BMC Munich to study the Drosophila melanogaster DOMINO nucleosome remodeling complex in context of the DNA damage stress response. In January 2024, she switched floors to join the Villaseñor lab as doctoral student and will continue her academic journey working on early cancer detection and tumor classification using epigenomic biomarkers in blood. In her off-time, Lara spends lots of time catching up with friends and reducing her pile of unread books. She also enjoys being creative and does martial arts.

email: lara.kopp[at]bmc.med.lmu.de

Namisha Rakesh

Namisha comes from India and was raised in the beautiful city of Dubai. She did her bachelor’s in Biotechnology, where she discovered her love for Molecular Biology. Then she moved to Munich to do her master’s in Molecular and Cellular Biology. During her thesis, she worked on studying RNA inheritance during aging and the cell cycle in S. cerevisiae at the Institute of Functional Epigenetics (IFE). Fully immersed in the world of epigenetics at IFE, she became truly fascinated by it and hence joined the Villaseñor lab for her PhD studies where she will investigate regulatory mechanisms governing combinatorial chromatin states in health and disease. In her free time, she likes go skiing, try new food, travel, and swim.

email: namisha.rakesh[at]bmc.med.lmu.de

Christa Schwarzlose

Christa (aka Daisy) Schwarzlose was born in a small town near Munich. In 1983, Daisy started to work as a technician at the Institute of Physiological Chemistry in the lab of Prof. Horst Feldmann. She was involved in all aspects of the Yeast Genome Sequencing Project during this time. After the retirement of Prof. Feldmann in 1999, she joined the group of Prof. Peter Becker at the BMC Munich, taking care of insect cell culture and organizing consumables. In June 2022, she joined the Villaseñor lab as lab manager, handling all concerns around the lab. Daisy enjoys spending time with the family, listening to good music, and taking trips to the nearby mountains in her spare time.

email:

daisy.schwarzlose[at]med.uni-muenchen.de

Marius Schneider, PhD

Marius studied biochemistry in Tübingen from 2009-2015. His main interest is understanding how non-coding RNAs and chromatin modifications regulate genes. During his studies, he worked on a strategy to correct G to A mutations on RNA level by site-directed RNA editing. He then moved to Munich to study the function of long non-coding RNAs in neurogenesis and degeneration for his PhD thesis. After ten exciting years in RNA research, Marius joined the Villaseñor lab to now conduct exciting applied research in chromatin biology. In addition to his bench work, he designs reproducible data analysis pipelines for the lab.

Foto: Barbara Nitz

email:

marius.schneider[at]bmc.med.lmu.de

Rodrigo Villaseñor, PhD

Rodrigo was born and raised in México and embodies a mix of cultures. In Germany, he had the privilege to enjoy free education, sparking his interest in science and technology and enabling him to study at world-class institutions (Uni Konstanz, IMBA Vienna, U of T, FMI Basel, Uni Zurich). His research focuses on understanding the various regulatory layers that control gene expression. Throughout his career, he developed strategies that combine precise genetic manipulation with proteomic and genomic technologies to study critical factors involved in various aspects of gene regulation. From 2022, the Emmy Noether Programme will generously support him to start his research group at the BMC Munich. When missing a pipette, Rodrigo enjoys climbing and hiking with his family in the Alps.

Foto: Jan Greune

email:

rodrigo.villasenor[at]bmc.med.lmu.de