Christina Zielinski

Christina Zielinski is the Chair of the Department of Infection Immunology at the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology and a professor at the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena. She studied medicine at the University of Heidelberg (Germany), at Harvard University (USA) and Duke University (USA). Her MD thesis research was performed at Yale University as a scholar of the German National Merit Foundation where she focused on the role of T cells in the pathogenesis of lupus erythematosus. Christina performed her postdoctoral training as a scholar of the German Research Foundation in the lab of Federica Sallusto in Switzerland where she decoded the regulatory cues that drive distinct functionalities of human Th17 cells. She then started her own research group as a Clinician Scientist at the Department of Dermatology at the Charité University Hospital in Berlin. Christina Zielinski also completed her clinical specialization in dermatology and allergology at the University of Tübingen and the Charité-University Medicine in Berlin. In 2015, Christina was appointed professor at the German Center for Infection Research at the Technical University of Munich. Since 2021, she has been the Chair of Infection Immunology at the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology and the Friedrich Schiller University in Jena, where she is currently working on the regulation of human T cells and their translational impact in autoimmunity, infections, and cancer. Christina has been the recipient of a numerous research awards such as the Paul Langerhans Prize, the German Atopic Dermatitis Award and the Robert-Koch-Postdoctoral Prize. She also serves as a board member of the Germany Society of Immunology and the European Society for Dermatological research.

Hana Polasek-Sedlackova

Hana Polasek-Sedlackova is a group leader of the Laboratory of DNA Replication and Genome Stability at the Institute of Biophysics of the Czech Academy of Sciences in Brno, Czech Republic. Her laboratory combines quantitative high-content single-cell imaging with genome editing and biochemical approaches to investigate the cellular processes that ensure the error-free copying of DNA necessary for understanding the molecular basis of serious diseases such as cancer.