People
After earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry from Western Washington University, Alicia went on to complete her Ph.D. thesis research under the supervision of Dr. Carrie Partch studying transcriptional regulation within the mammalian circadian clock at the University of California, Santa Cruz.
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Following her PhD in the USA, Alicia continued her research in Switzerland. She worked at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, where she was advised by Dr. Nicolas Thomä, and began studies examining transcription factor engagement with chromatin. She then moved across the Rhein river to the University of Basel, Biozentrum, with Dr. Ben Engel, investigating the structural transitions of chromatin within cells using cryo-electron tomography. In April 2024, she joined the Institute of Science and Technology Austria as an Assistant Professor.​
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Fun fact: Alicia has been singing in rock bands since she was 16 years old and has a potentially unhealthy obsession with small things, especially guinea pigs.
Onkar completed his undergraduate research at the Institute of Bioinformatics and Biotechnology, Pune, completing a Master's dissertation under the guidance of Dr Vaijayanti Tamhane.
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In the lab Onkar is applying his bioinformatic knowledge and interest in chromatin to study how transcription factors interface with the histone code.
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Fun fact: Onkar has a habit of diving into ambitious projects—like deciding to cook for 20 people—only to realize, at the very last minute, that he’s completely out of salt.
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Dari completed bachelor's degree in Chemistry working on organic synthesis of drug-like small molecules and PROTACs. After that, she received a BARI fellowship and worked as an intern on non-covalent interactions and was first introduced to the chemistry of chromatin. Dari pursued joint master's programme and obtained three masters degrees in Nanotechnology, Physics Engineering and Fundamental Physics. She conducted her master's thesis on covalent peptide binders with Prof. Christian Heinis at EPFL.
In the lab Dari is unraveling the details of the interaction of circadian transcription factors and their cofactors.
Fun fact: Thanks to Dari's unresting enthusiasm and thrive to learn new things, Dari has lived in 7 countries and looking for more. Related to this, she likes to refer to herself as "Dari the explorer".
Susana obtained a Bachelor of Science degree in Biology from the University of Porto in Portugal. During her studies, she had the opportunity to complete her Bachelor's thesis at the MPI-CBG in André Nadler´s lab, focusing on the lipid sorting during clathrin-mediated endocytosis.
Susana is currently a scientific intern in the lab, after completing the summer ISTernship and is studying chromatin organization and circadian biology while establishing the lab's new model organism, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.
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Fun Fact: Susana started solo traveling this year and quickly embraced her adventurous (and slightly reckless) side. From ending up alone on a mountain at night chasing a sunset to cliff jumping with strangers, she's made unforgettable memories—and plenty of stories to tell!
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Pavol holds an MSc in Systems Engineering and Informatics and a PhD in Machine Learning from Brno University of Technology, where he focused on applying machine learning to voice pathology data. He then went on to do his postdoc at the University of Vienna and the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology, working with Philipp Grohs and David Haselbach, to develop deep learning methods for cryo-electron tomography.
Pavol leads the integration of machine learning approaches into cryoET pipelines and is the go-to computational expert for machine learning and tomography data analysis, both within the group and across ISTA.
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Fun Fact: As a seasoned drummer and computer scientist, Pavol ensures the group stays in sync and up to tempo.
Orla completed a B.Sc. in Biochemistry at University College Dublin and an M.Sc. in Structural Biology at Queens University Belfast. This was followed by a Ph.D. in Structural Biology and Biophysics at University College London and the Institut Laue-Langevin, Grenoble, focusing on the interactions of proteins involved in innate immunity. Following this, she moved to Newcastle University, U.K., as a Post-Doctoral researcher, investigating the structure of the meiotic synaptonemal complex in the lab of Prof. Owen Davies. In 2019, Orla joined the Vienna Biocenter Core Facilities as a Senior Scientist in protein production and biophysics and later moved to BioNTech R&D Austria, working on developing alternatives to antibiotics.
She joined the Michael lab in November 2024 as Lab Manager.
Fun fact: Despite being afraid of heights, Orla once did a skydive and enjoyed every minute of it!
Joanna completed her Bachelor’s degree in Neuroscience at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, where she is currently pursuing a Master’s degree in Biophysics. Her Bachelor’s thesis focused on modeling the oscillatory behavior of the mammalian circadian clock using the repressilator network. Joanna also contributed to the 2024 JU Kraków iGEM team, working on a SHERLOCK-based detection system aimed at identifying harmful algal species. Her research interests lie at the intersection of computational modeling and biological systems.
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In the lab Joanna is applying bioengineering and molecular animation concepts to identify new modes of nucleosome binding.
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Fun Fact: Relating to the "chrono" part of the group name: Joanna can fall asleep anywhere—even with someone practicing violin in the same room or while a bus is nearly sliding off a mountain in the Alps.
IST-BRIDGE Fellow
Deepthi completed her PhD in the Molecular Biophysics Unit at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore, India, under the guidance of Dr. Aravind Penmatsa. There, she focused on the structural, mechanistic, and pharmacological studies of inhibitory neurotransmitter transporters using X-ray crystallography.
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She then went to work with the lab of Dr. Jason McLellan as a as a postdoctoral fellow at the Univerity of Texas, Austin, investigating viral glycoprotein structures in conjunction with human antibodies, using cryo-EM and X-ray crystallography techniques to analyze viral RNA polymerase and protease structures.
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In the lab, Deepthi is studying how DNA binding proteins interact with chromatin and their cofactors.​​​
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Fun Fact: Deepthi spent months preparing for her marathon debut, and when race day arrived, she dashed through the course so quickly that not a single drop had time to land on her shoes. Now she’s just waiting at the finish line, wondering when the next race will start!