I first became interested in pursuing a field in biology after finishing high school. I started my bachelor studies in Germany, where I completed many mandatory computational classes in my molecular biology program. It was during this time that I acquired a sincere interest in the computational biology sector.
Although I found basic research interesting to study, I became more passionate about the translational bioinformatics field. Afterward, my primary concentration moved toward the area of computational immunology. The immune system is intriguing to study because of its complexity and the fact that every part and cell type plays its own role.
My research focuses on computational immunology, allergic diseases, biomedical informatics and publicly available data. Mainly, my work aims to apply computational approaches for the connection between immunological and clinical research. In the past several years of research, I’ve concentrated on food allergy and other atopic conditions.
While the central overarching theme of my lab’s work has been computational immunology, my team and I are also working on the reuse of patient-level clinical trial data. I have found that individual-level data from clinical studies are usually not used to their full potential.
One platform for publicly available data that I have experience with from my time as a postdoctoral scholar is the immunology database and analysis portal (ImmPort). This National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded portal is a public warehouse that grants open access to clinical and mechanistic data from immunological and clinical research. I continue to work with, and on, ImmPort along with other publicly available data.
My team and I are applying computational and statistical approaches to large immunological and clinical datasets. As such, our team should play a vital role in progressing our understanding, diagnosis and treatment of various immune-related conditions.
I have more than eight years of experience in the computational biology field and began working for the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center in January 2020.
BS: Westphalian University of Applied Sciences, Germany, 2005.
MS: Westphalian University of Applied Sciences, Germany, 2007.
PhD: University of Potsdam, Germany, 2011.
Computational immunology; biomedical informatics; publicly available clinical data; food allergy
Biomedical Informatics, Allergy and Immunology
Risk subgroups and intervention effects among infants at high risk for peanut allergy: A model for clinical decision making. Clinical and Experimental Allergy. 2024; 54:185-194.
Food Allergy Characteristics Associated With Coexisting Eosinophilic Esophagitis in FARE Registry Participants. The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: in Practice. 2023; 11:1509-1521.e6.
CyAnno: a semi-automated approach for cell type annotation of mass cytometry datasets. Bioinformatics. 2021; 37:4164-4171.
Mass cytometry reveals cellular fingerprint associated with IgE+ peanut tolerance and allergy in early life. Nature Communications. 2020; 11:1091.
Anti-IgE treatment with oral immunotherapy in multifood allergic participants: a double-blind, randomised, controlled trial. The Lancet Gastroenterology and Hepatology. 2018; 3:85-94.
Association of Clinical Reactivity with Sensitization to Allergen Components in Multifood-Allergic Children. The Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology: in Practice. 2017; 5:1325-1334.e4.
Progressive accumulation of hyperinflammatory NKG2Dlow NK cells in early childhood severe atopic dermatitis. Science Immunology. 2024; 9:eadd3085.
Immune cell profiles associated with human exposure to perfluorinated compounds (PFAS) suggest changes in natural killer, T helper, and T cytotoxic cell subpopulations. Environmental Research. 2024; 256:119221.
Antigen-specific decidual CD8+ T cells include distinct effector memory and tissue-resident memory cells. JCI insight. 2023; 8.
Proinflammatory polarization of monocytes by particulate air pollutants is mediated by induction of trained immunity in pediatric asthma. Allergy: European Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. 2023; 78:1922-1933.