Prasoon Pandey joins the lab as an LGSA Fellow
Welcome Prasoon, who joins the group with a PhD fellowship from the Leibniz Graduate School on Aging — a joint programme between FLI and Friedrich Schiller University Jena.
Mini-Group Retreat
A day of AI tools, collaboration, and a mini hackathon—coffee with a view from JenTower, team discussions, and debugging with humans and models.
2026
Aging and Microbiome Conference 2025 (AMC2025)
AMC returned for its third edition — two days of keynotes, panel debate with live audience polling, vibrant poster sessions, and sponsor bingo. Co-organised by Clara Correia-Melo, Dario Valenzano, Melike Dönertaş, and Katarzyna Winek.
3 days of science at GJAM 2025
Our group had an oral talk + 5 posters at GJAM 2025. Huge kudos to first-year BSc student Efe Begik for presenting his project on comparative proteomics of brain aging & neurodegeneration.
ISMB 2025
Tayyaba received an OBF Event Fellowship to attend ISMB/ECCB 2025 in Liverpool — co-led a Mendelian Randomization tutorial, attended talks, including keynotes from John Jumper and Fabian Theis, and reflects on a packed week.
Tayyaba awarded OBF Event Fellowship for ISMB 2025
Congrats to Tayyaba Alvi on receiving an Event Fellowship from the Open Bioinformatics Foundation to attend ISMB/ECCB 2025 in Liverpool.
2025
Q&A in Communications Biology: Decoding ageing
Melike spoke with Communications Biology about the lab's research on the microbiome and ageing — the journey from evolutionary genomics at METU to leading a group at FLI, the prospects for delaying ageing, and building inclusive labs.
Ulaş awarded Joachim Herz Stiftung Add-on Fellowship
Huge congrats to Ulaş Işıldak for the Add-on Fellowship from Joachim Herz Stiftung! Ulaş develops computational methods to study the gut microbiome in aging.
Aging and Microbiome Conference 2024 (AMC2024)
Building on JMM23, we hosted AMC2024 — 1.5 days bringing together ~90 researchers around the intersection of aging and the microbiome. Chaired by Clara Correia-Melo and Dario Valenzano, co-organised by Melike Dönertaş and Katarzyna Winek.
Ready. Set. Experiment! — wetlab is open
Our wetlab is up and running. Special thanks to İsmail Güderer for being the driving force behind making it a reality. Time to get those pipettes moving!
2024
Jena Microbiome Meeting 2023 (JMM23)
We hosted the first Jena Microbiome Meeting at FLI — a one-day symposium bringing aging into Jena's microbiome research community. Co-organised by Clara Correia-Melo, Melike Dönertaş, and Katarzyna Winek.
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