Dr. Sagar Bhogaraju

Postdoctoral Fellow
Phone: +49 (0)69 798-42582
bhogaraju(at)med.uni-frankfurt.de

Sagar obtained his master degree in Biological Sciences from Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India. After a brief stint as a senior research analysis with a patent consultancy company Evalueserve, Delhi, he moved to Munich for his PhD at Max-Plank Institute for Biochemistry. He carried out his PhD under the supervision of Dr. Esben Lorentzen where he studied the structure and function of Intraflagellar transport proteins that are involved in making eukaryotic cilium. He later joined Ivan Dikic'€™s lab as a postdoc. He is interested mainly in structural and functional characterisation of ubiquitin ligases.

Dr. Sissy Kalayil

Postdoctoral Fellow
Phone: +49 (0)69 798-42582
kalayil(at)med.uni-frankfurt.de

Sissy did her Master’s in the Dept. of Biological Sciences and Bioengineering at IIT Kanpur, India. Following this, she spent almost two years in the Dept. of Biological Sciences at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN. Sissy obtained her PhD in Dec 2015 from the group of Prof. Dr. Werner KΓΌhlbrandt at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysics in Frankfurt where she investigated the structural and functional aspects of membrane transporters. She joined the Dikic lab as a postdoc in Jan 2016 where she is trying to understand the properties of membrane curving proteins and also investigating the structural and biochemical aspects of novel ubiquitination mechanisms.

Dr. Mohit Misra

Postdoctoral Fellow
Phone: +49 (0)69 798-42582
misra(at)biochem2.de

Mohit obtained his Master's in Biotechnology and worked as a Junior Research Fellow at ICGEB, New Delhi. He moved to WΓΌrzburg to pursue his doctorate in Prof. Hermann Schindelin's lab where he worked on the structural and biochemical characterization of the ubiquitin activating enzyme. After a brief postdoc in WΓΌrbzurg, he has joined the Dikic lab in April 2018 to explore novel mechanisms of ubiquitylation by bacterial effector proteins.

Dr. Alexandra Stolz

Team Leader Autophagy Probes
Phone: +49 (0)69 798-42718
stolz(at)em.uni-frankfurt.de
Curriculum Vitae

Alexandra Stolz studied Biochemistry in Regensburg, Germany followed by a PhD in yeast genetics and molecular biology in Stuttgart, Germany. After a postdoc (2012-2013) working on ER associated protein degradation (ERAD) – a proteasome dependent pathway, Alexandra joined the groups of Andreas Ernst and Ivan Dikic at IBC2 in Frankfurt, Germany (2013-2016) to work on autophagy. Besides contributing to the characterization of the first autophagy receptor for ER-phagy FAM134B and elaborating the role of the kinase TBK1 in mitophagy, she utilized phage display and protein engineering to develop fluorescent sensors for the central autophagy components LC3/GABARAPs. In January 2017, she joined Genentech in South San Francisco, United States as a visiting scientist where she studied the impact of oncogene-induced secretion during cancer pathogenesis. From February 2018, Alexandra is a team leader of the autophagy probe program, which aims to target different autophagy components including kinases, autophagy receptors and individual LC3/GABARAPs to block or enhance specific canonical and non-canonical autophagy pathways.

Dr. Marija Zbacnik

Postdoctoral Fellow
Phone: +49 (0)69 798-42582
E-Mail

Marija Zbacnik was born in Velika Gorica, a town close to Zagreb, the capital of Croatia where she finished her formal education. She obtained her diploma as dipl. ing. of chemistry and a teacher of chemistry in 2008 at the Department of Chemistry, University of Zagreb. She obtained her Ph.D. in structural and inorganic chemistry in 2013 at the same University. She was working at the Chemistry department, University of Zagreb, Croatia for 9 years, until the beginning of 2018. She was a co-supervisor on three Masters theses in Croatia, and has published 9 scientific papers cited in CC database. Her scientific interests in Zagreb were focused on mechanochemical synthesis and crystallization of materials with interesting optical properties in the solid state. She spent 6 months in Bloemfontain, South Africa in 2014-2015 for her first postdoc, and is now working at BMLS as a postdoctoral fellow. Marija joined the Molecular Signalling group at the BMLS in August 2017, and her scientific interests are currently focused on biomolecular crystallization and crystallography.

Yaobin Liu

PhD Student
Phone: +49 (0)69 798-42582
yaobinliu(at)stud.uni-frankfurt.de

Yaobin obtained his master degree in Pharmacology at Soochow University, China. Under the mentorship of professor Guoqiang Xu, he studied the mechanism by which Lenalidomide treats the blood cancer multiple myeloma. He joined the lab of Ivan Dikic as a PhD student in May 2016. During his PhD he is now trying to understand more about the novel serine ubiquitination by SdeA and working on the regulation of phosphoribosyl-ubiquitination.