Preliminary Programme

Wednesday, September 16^th, 2026

08:30 - 09:00	Registration
09:00 - 09:15	Welcome Address: Prof. Dr. Wencke Gwozdz, JLU Vice President for Research and Graduate Studies
09:15 - 09:30	Opening Remarks: Prof. Dr. Eveline Baumgart-Vogt, Speaker of the GGL

Section 10: Clinical Sciences | Chair: Dr. Tim Wilhelmi

09:30 - 10:15	Keynote: Dr. Nicolas Ktistakis, The Babraham Institute, Cambridge, UK The plasticity of the autophagic pathway: making autophagosomes big and small
10:15 - 10:30	Tamal Sarkar: IRE1α Provides Therapeutic Vulnerability and Prognostic Stratification in Patients with PDAC
10:30 - 10:45	Huiji Li: Deciphering aldosterone deficiency and pseudodeficiency in infancy by targeted GC-MS urinary steroid metabotyping
10:45 - 11:15	Coffee Break

Section 6: Reproduction in Man and Animals | Chair: Pia Holtkamp

11:15 - 12:00	Keynote: Prof. Maria Agustina Battistone, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard, USA Guardians of Sperm: How Epithelial and Immune Cells in the Epididymis Shape Male Fertility
12:00 - 12:15	Prabhu Subramani: Functional and Metabolic Heterogeneity of Testicular Macrophages
12:15 - 12:45	General Assembly
12:45 - 13:45	Lunch

Sektion 5 Neurosciences | Chair: Daria Hennrichs

13:45 - 14:30

Keynote: Dr. Justine Schmidt; University Hospital Essen, Germany

The Power of Expectation: Placebo and Nocebo Effects on inflammation-induced Sickness Symptoms

14:30 - 14:45

Shirin Alami: The Effects of Frontal Gamma-Transcranial Alternating Current Stimulation (tACS) on Auditory Attention and Working Memory

14:45 - 15:15

Coffee Break

Section 4: Protein and Nucleic Acid Interactions | Chair: Kiriaki Kouti

15:15 - 16:00	Keynote: Dr. Milan Gerovac, Helmholtz Zentrum for Infection Biology, Brunswick, Germany To be or Not be Virulent as a Nucleus-forming Phage
16:00 - 16:15	Theresa Dietz: Ribosome heterogeneity under cold stress in bacteria
16:15 - 16:30	Anina Niederer: Selection and characterization of fully synthetic IgG fragments targeting Neurotensin 1 Receptor
16:30 - 18:45	Poster Session and Finger Food

Section 9: Ecology and Global Change | Chair: Johannes Zeidler

09:30 - 10:15	Keynote: Jayan Wijensingha, Faculty of Organic Agricultural Sciences, Kassel University, Germany
10:15 - 10:30	Lukas Engelbach: Two Crops, One Field: Land-Use Efficiency of Wheat–Herb Strip Intercropping Across Sites and Years
10:30 - 10:45	Sarah-Olivia Peter: Beneath the Canopy: Spatio-Temporal Soil-Climate Dynamics in Three Alley Cropping Systems in Germany
10:45 - 11:15	Coffee Break

Section 7: Bioresources, Bioinformatics and Biotechnology | Chair: Lucas Machain

11:15 - 12:00

Keynote: Prof. Yoichi Honda, Lab of Forest Biochemistry, Kyoto University, Japan

Genome editing, non-GM breeding and and post-genomics in mushrooms

12:00 - 12:15

Cristina Borghesi: Next-generation pest control: engineering Y-linked genetic markers in Ceratitis capitata

12:15 - 13:15

Lunch Break

Section 3: Heart, Lung and Blood Vessels | Chair: Dana Cojocaru

13:15 - 14:00	Keynote:
14:00 - 14:15	Mausam Rana: Dynamic Epigenetic Landscape Remodeling Reveals Regulatory Programs Driving Cardiac Regeneration in Zebrafish
14:15 - 14:30	Zahra Moazezi Tehrankhah: Optimizing Human Alveolar Macrophage Culture Conditions from hMonocytes and hiPSCs for Modeling Environmental Lung Exposures
14:30 - 14:45	Henrike Treis: Impaired antioxidant defense increases susceptibility to pathological pulmonary vascular remodeling upon COPD-relevant exposure
14:45 - 17:00	Poster Session (incl. Coffee Break) and Finger Food

Section 2: Infection and Immunity | Chair: Marta Piche-Ovares

17:00 - 17:45	Keynote: Prof. Alexander Visekruna, Institute for Medical Microbiology and Hospital Hygiene, Philipps University Marburg, Germany Modulation of host immune responses by gut microbiota-derived metabolites
17:45 - 18:00	Tammy Schmidt: Hypervirulent and multidrug-resistant Klebsiella pneumoniae in animals in Germany
18:00 - 18:15	Dorothea Bünsow: Staphylococcus aureus exploits the lung environment to cause persistent infections
	Frederik Stettler: Schistosoma mansoni infection induces sex-specific liver injury and stress adaptation programs in HBsAg-transgenic mice
18:30 - 19:00	Closing Remarks and Award Ceremony