Monika Witzenberger

Monika Witzenberger is the alumni development director at Global Biotech Revolution. Before that, they worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science for six months. Prior to that, they worked as a PhD candidate at Helmholtz Zentrum München for four years and one month. There, they planned and developed the PhD project: “Structural and functional role of methyltransferases in polyQ diseases”. Monika also obtained expertise in X-ray crystallography, biophysics (SPR, ITC, SLS), RNA biochemistry, enzymatic assays, small molecule high throughput screening, cell culture and proteomics (BioID, IP). Monika collaborated closely with various laboratories and presented their PhD project in international conferences (New frontiers in structure-based drug discovery, Florence - Italy; Complex Life of RNA EMBO conference, Heidelberg - Germany). Additionally, they created 3-month research projects and supervised students in the lab, developed online material for structural biology courses, and selected PhD courses: Statistics with R, Young Entrepreneurs in Science, Project management.

Before their PhD candidate position, Witzenberger was a student employee at Integrated DNA Technologies for six months. Monika then did their master's thesis at Heidelberg University for a year on the topic of "Polarization of primary neonatal microglia towards a pro- or antiinflammatory phenotype". There, they established primary cell culture techniques and readout assays to assess the inflammatory status of microglia in the context of an Alzheimer’s disease model. Lastly, they did a research internship at Sagol School of Neuroscience at Tel Aviv University for four months.

Monika Witzenberger has a Master of Science from Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg in Molekulare Biotechnologie and a Bachelor of Science from the same school in the same field. Monika was editor of the student newspaper's science section, a physical chemistry tutor for undergraduate students, and an elected representative of first-aid and emergency service volunteers. Monika completed six self-organized research internships at the LMB in Cambridge, Tel Aviv University, Heidelberg University and German Cancer Research Center, as well as one internship in industry. Monika was awarded with a PROMOS stipend for a research stay abroad.