Members

Group leader

 

Prof. Dr. Meret Huber

Email: meret.huber@uni-mainz.de

Tel: +49 6131 39 30260

©Stefan F. Sämmer, JGU Mainz

Meret Huber received her master’s degree in biology from the University of Zürich in 2011. She then moved to the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena for her PhD, in which she studied how plants defend their roots against herbivorous insects. After a short postdoctoral employment at the Max Planck Institute, she established a junior research group at the University of Münster to elucidate transgenerational stress memory in clonal plants. In 2022, she received funding from the DFG Emmy Noether Programme to study the epigenetic basis of transgenerational stress memory. In 2023, Meret Huber became a professor in plant evolutionary ecology at the University of Mainz. She also serves as a director of the botanical garden of the University of Mainz.

 

 

 

Administrative Management

 

Martina Galloway

Email: galloway@uni-mainz.de

Tel: +49 6131 39 30868

Holding a BA in Communication Design from the University of Applied Sciences Mainz, Martina Galloway had been working in the retail industry and as a yoga entrepreneur before she started further training in 2022 to expand her expertise in commercial matters and Human Resources. Following certification from Wifa Mainz business school in 2023, she pursued her current administrative role at the University of Mainz.

 

 

 

 

Postdoc / junior group leader

 

Dr. Martin Schäfer

E-mail: mschaefer@uni-mainz.de

Tel: +49 6131 39 29159

Martin Schäfer received his PhD from the University of Jena for his work at the Max-Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology (MPI-ICE, Prof. Ian Baldwin) on the role of growth and development-related phytohormones in plant-herbivore interactions in 2015. He continued working at the MPI-ICE until 2018, then moved to the Institute for Evolution and Biodiversity in Münster, before moving to the Institute of Organismic and Molecular Evolution (IomE) in Mainz in 2022. He has extensive experience in chemical ecology and analytical chemistry, in particular the LC-MS based analysis of small metabolites, and he's interested in studying the mechanisms and functions behind diverse plant interactions.

 

Dr. Amanda Lopes

Amanda Lopes received her PhD in 2018 from the Federal University of Vicosa (Brazil) for her work on Plastid Genomics of several plant species. In 2021, she moved to the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology for her postdoctoral research granted by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, in which her research focused on Plastid Biotechnology for the development of a plant-based hyaluronic acid production platform. In April 2023, she worked as a Technology Development Specialist at the Brazilian Center for Research in Energy and Materials where she studied the engineering of yeasts for biofuel production. In November 2023, she joined the Huber group for postdoctoral research focusing on the development of protocols to engineer the nuclear and plastid genomes of duckweed and their biotechnological applications.

 

 

PhD student

 

Laura Böttner

E-mail: boettner@uni-muenster.de

Laura started her PhD in April 2018. She is interested in understanding how microbiome and herbivores jointly shape the evolution of plant defences. She uses both dandelion and duckweed as her study systems. She is co-supervised by Dr Meret Huber and Prof. Dirk Prüfer.

 

 

 

 

Alexandra Mireya Chávez Argandoña

E-mail: chavezaa@uni-mainz.de

Tel: +49 6131 39 26866

Alexandra joined the Huber group in October 2020. She is a biologist from the Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia, Peru, and received her M.Sc. degree in Evolutionary Biology from the Universidad del Bío-Bío, Chile. Alexandra is interested in explaining the role of non-genetic transgenerational inheritance in clonal evolution.

 

 

 

 

 

Enrico Diniz Rodrigues Batista

E-mail: enrico.diniz@usp.br

Tel: +49 6131 39 26866

Enrico is a Biotechnology Engineer graduated at the State University of São Paulo, Brazil, in 2022. In August 2023, he completed his a master's degree in Genetics and Plant Breeding at the University of São Paulo, Brazil.

Enrico started his Ph.D. in the Huber group in September 2023. Throughout his doctoral studies, he will investigate the molecular mechanisms underlying transgenerational epigenetic inheritance in giant duckweed (Spirodela polyrhiza).

 

 

 

 

M.Sc. student

Fiona Brurein

fbrurein@students.uni-mainz.de

After receiving her BA in Nature Conservation from the University of Landau, Fiona worked for several years for a Nature Conservation organisation as a project manager before she started her Master's program at the University of Mainz. During an Erasmus at the University of Lisbon, she got the opportunity to familiarise herself with a phenomenon known as the "Great Atlantic Sargassum Belt". In her Master Thesis, she uses hawksbill turtle (Eretmochelys imbricata) telemetry data as well as Sentinel-2 data to research environmental change and potential Sargassum influx in hawksbill turtle habitat.

 

 

B.Sc. student

 

Lisa-Marie Laick

llaick@students.uni-mainz.de

Lisa is studying B.Sc. Biology at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz.
She will join the Huber lab by mid-September to do her bachelor project. Her interest is to investigate how plants can adapt to environmental changes. During her bachelor project, she will study the non-genetic transgenerational plasticity of duckweed under recurring stress.

 

 

 

 

Anne Schreyer

aschreye@students.uni-mainz.de

Anne is currently studying B.Sc. Biology at the JGU and will begin her bachelor thesis in mid-September in the Huber lab.
Her interest is in how plants respond to stress in the environment. For her Bachelor project, she will study the plant-environment interactions and non-genetic transgenerational inheritance of duckweed.

 

 

 

 

Technical assistant

 

Manuela Rathgeber

Email: marathge@uni-mainz.de

Telefon +49 6131 39 23091

Manuela Rathgeber worked at Böhringer Ingelheim after her training as TA until she took time off to raise her children.
In her following positon, she gained experience with a wide variety of responsibilities in the microbiology laboratory of a service laboratory for almost 25 years.
Since June 2023, she has been supporting AG Huber as a TA.