AG Gerold
Head of Group
Prof. Dr. Gisa Gerold
University Professor; Head of Institute; Laboratory
direct dial (secretary office) +49 511 953-8781
Gisa Gerold
Gisa Gerold studied biochemistry at the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, where she received her diploma in biochemistry (minors in physical chemistry and microbiology) in 2003. In 2008, she received her Ph.D. in biology and biochemistry from Humboldt University Berlin, conducting her research at the Max Planck Institute for Infection Biology under the supervision of Professor Arturo Zychlinsky. Her doctoral thesis focused on the innate immune response to bacteria. This work was awarded the Otto Hahn Medal of the Max Planck Society.
During her three years of postdoctoral research at the "Center of Hepatitis C" at the Rockefeller University, New York, USA under the direction of Professor Charles M. Rice, she worked on various aspects of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, including host tropism and HCV-related viruses in animals. From 2012 to 2017, she worked at Twincore, a joint facility of Hannover Medical School and the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research. There, she investigated mechanisms of HCV entry into hepatocytes using a combination of mass spectrometric proteomic analysis and virological methods. For her postdoctoral work, she solicited independent grants from the National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the Human Frontiers Science Program (HFSP), and the German Research Foundation (DFG). In 2017, the work was awarded the Robert Koch Prize for Postdoctoral Researchers in Virology.
From 2017 to 2020, she led the Viral Proteomics research group at Twincore's Institute of Experimental Virology and has held a visiting professorship at Umeå University in Sweden since 2018. The work at the Swedish Wallenberg Center for Molecular Medicine (WCMM) is funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation and the Kempe Foundation. Her German-Swedish team is studying the entry of human pathogenic viruses such as HCV, noroviruses and chikungunya virus into the host cell as well as the innate immunity of the host cell to viral infection. Using novel technologies including label-free protein quantification, her team aims to elucidate fundamental principles of virus entry and virus recognition.
Since 2019, Gisa Gerold has been a board member of the Center for Infection Biology (ZIB) and since 2020 an associate member of the RESIST Cluster of Excellence at Hannover Medical School. From 2017 to 2018, Gisa Gerold co-chaired the annual "Cell Biology of Viral Infections" workshop of the German Society of Virology (GfV) with Dr. Pierre-Yves Lozach (University of Lyon), where she was elected as a member of the advisory board in 2020 and to the board of Directors in 2023. In 2021, she established the new GfV working group "One Health and Zoonotic Viruses", which she co-chairs with Dr. Yvonne Börgeling from the University of Münster.
In 2020, Gisa Gerold was appointed Professor of Biochemistry - Focus Molecular and Clinical Infectiology - at the Foundation of the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover. There, as a member of the Institute of Biochemistry at the "Research Center for Emerging Infections and Zoonoses" (RIZ), her team conducts research on viruses that are transmitted from animals to humans and cause diseases in humans and animals. The focus is on mosquito-borne viruses of the alphavirus genus, on arenaviruses causing hemorrhagic fever, and on gastrointestinal viruses such as noroviruses. Methodologically, Gisa Gerold's team uses state-of-the-art proteomics approaches to discover new host factors of potentially epidemic-causing viruses and thus to understand which hosts are infected by the viruses and how the viruses trigger disease in specific tissues of humans and animals.
A biochemist and virologist, she has been director of the Institute of Biochemistry since 2022. In 2023, she was appointed deputy spokesperson of the VIPER Research Training Group.
The German work is funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG), the Ministry of Science and Culture of Lower Saxony (MWK), the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) and the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).
The Swedish work is made possible by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, the Kempe Foundation and the Erling-Persson Foundation.
Staff
Curriculum vitae
Karsten Cirksena is a postdoctoral fellow and molecular biologist combining mass spectrometry based proteomics and the bioinformatic analysis of various omics data with a focus on infections caused by neurotropic viruses.
Karsten Cirksena studied Biology at the University of Hamburg where he got his Bachelor degree with a study on the regulation of bone remodelling at the Helmholtz Centre hereon. He moved to the Hannover Medical School to study Biomedicine and later joined the group of Prof. Falk Büttner at the Institute of Clinical Biochemistry guided by Prof. Dr Rita Gerardy-Schahn to establish the CRISPR Cas based genetic engineering in stem cells and (glyco) proteomic data analyses. As part of an institute with a main emphasis on glycobiology, he worked on the characterisation of glycosyltransferases in stem cells and their influence on the cells’ secretome and downstream signalling processes, ending up with a Master degree and a PhD as part of the Regenerative Sciences program of the REBIRTH Cluster of Excellence.
Karsten Cirksena joined the group of Prof. Dr. Gisa Gerold at the institute for Biochemistry at the University of Veterinary Medicine in Hanover as a postdoctoral fellow in 2022. As a molecular biologist with a bioinformatic background, Karsten Cirksena brings extensive experiences in the fields of stem cell derived model systems, mass spectrometry based proteomics as well as big data analyses in general. He is currently focused on a better understanding of the common and specific mechanisms of infections caused by various neurotropic viruses, using stem cell derived neurospheres and other cell culture based neural models. In addition, he is responsible for setting up and running the new proteomics lab of the Gerold group, equipped with a new Orbitrap Eclipse mass spectrometer.
Curriculum Vitae
Nele Villabruna is a postdoctoral fellow with a special interest in Noroviruses. She studied Biology at the University of Basel, Switzerland, and became interested in Marine Biology during this time. After receiving her Bachelor’s degree in 2013, she continued to study Applied Marine Sciences at the University of Plymouth, UK. For her Master’s thesis, she focused on the giant Emiliana huxleyi virus, which infects Emiliania huxleyi, one of the most abundant algae species. Under the supervision of Prof. Mike Allen, she characterized the viral protein EHV298 and its interactions with various virus and host factors. Working on these fascinating viruses sparked her interest in virology, and after receiving her Master’s degree in 2014, she changed her focus from giant marine viruses to human viruses and worked as a research assistant at the Heidelberg University in Germany. In the arbovirus group, led by Dr. Pierre-Yves Lozach, she studied cell entry of the tick-borne Uukuniemi virus. In 2016, she started her PhD under the supervision of Dr. Miranda de Graaf and Prof. Dr. Marion Koopmans in the Department of Viroscience, Erasmus MC, Rotterdam, the Netherlands. During her PhD trajectory, she investigated noroviruses at the human-animal interface, the role of different hosts in norovirus circulation, and the emergence of novel variants and recombinants. In the group of Prof. Gisa Gerold, she will continue working on Noroviruses at the human-animal interface.
Tessy Hick
PostDoc
Universitätsklinikum
Universität Umeå, 901 85 Umeå
AG Magnus Evander Lab
Alumni of the Gerold Group
Jule Hupfeld, M.Sc.
now: tbd
Daniel Arturo Jimenez Soto
now: Master student at the National University of Costa Rica and in cooperation with the University of Veterinary Medicine Hannover in the 'Animal Biology and Biomedical Science' program
Dr. Julia Leonardy
now: Research associate at the Institute of Forensic Medicine at the MHH
Belén Carriquí, Ph.D
now: PostDoc at Fraunhofer-Institut für Translationale Medizin und Pharmakologie (ITMP), Göttingen
Dr. Karin Löw
now: tbd
Eve Brown
now: still a medical student at Hannover Medical School, Germany
Heike Kanapin
now: Retired
Franziska Wölfl, MSc, Ph.D. student
now: Junior Consultant Research at New Chapter Executive Search GmbH, Hamburg, Germany
Mohamed Saad, MSc
now: Ph.D. Student at the Institute for Virology at the University Hospital Essen, Germany
Rebecca Möller, Ph.D.
now: PostDoc at Biotech research & innovation research center, University of Copenhagen
Dr. Annasara Lenman
now: Associate professor at the Department of Clinical Microbiology, Umeå University, Sweden
Graham Brogden, Ph.D.
now: Research associate, Cell and Developmental Biology Center (CDBC) of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) at the National Institutes of Health, Maryland, United States
Francisco J. Zapatero Belinchón, Ph.D.
now: PostDoc at Gladstone Institutes, San Francisco, United States
Anne Pfennig, Labormanagerin
now: Research associate at Thiem-Research GmbH in Cottbus
Josephine Schenk, M.Sc.
now: Ph.D student at Hannover medical School, Germany
Jared Kirui, Ph.D.
now: Research associate at Children's Medical Research Institute in Sydney, Australia
Laura Arroyo, Master student
Pia Maria Alberione, Masterstudent
now: Ph.D. student at Barcelona Institute for Global Health, Spain
Janina Brüning, Masters tudent and PhD Student
Vanessa Kienzle, Master student
now: Biorad laboratories, Hannover
Pia Baines (geb. Banse), Medizinstudent
now: Practice in Duisburg
Wiebke Nicolay, Masterstudent
now: Projectleader, Burgwedel Biotech (MSD), Burgwedel
Markus Flosbach, Master Student
now: Ph.D. Student, Technical University, München
Sina Kahl, TA
now: State Criminal Investigation Office, Hannover
Kathrin Welsch, TA
now: Student of Veterinary medicine, Hannover
Kristina Schierhorn, Master student (Rockefeller University, New York, USA)
now: Postdoc at King’s College, London, UK
