Associated PhD Students

Paula Engelke is a doctoral researcher in the research group ‘Cognitive Control in the Context of Stress and Health’ (Head: Prof. Dr. Andre Pittig) and joins the RTG2660 as an associated PhD student. Her research focuses on extinction learning, avoidance and its generalization in humans, using laboratory fear conditioning paradigms. Outside of research, she enjoys literature, food, and of course coffee.

Janna Teigeler is a PhD researcher in Prof. Gamer’s lab. She joins the RTG2660 as an associated PhD student and plans to research approach and avoidance conflicts, especially in Social Anxiety Disorder.

Prior to her PhD, she studied psychology at the University of Würzburg, where she discovered her interest in neuroscientific research.

Outside of research, she enjoys cooking, baking sourdough bread and loves to go hiking.

Salomea Löffl is a doctoral researcher (Head: Prof. Dr. med. Claudia Sommer) and joins the RTG2660 as an associated PhD student.

Fiona Dewender is a doctoral researcher (Head: Prof. Dr. med. Claudia Sommer) and joins the RTG2660 as an associated PhD student.

Eleni Kakavela is a medical doctor and a clinical researcher at the University Hospital of Würzburg, in the department of Neurology.

She joins the RTG2660 as a doctoral researcher in the „VirtualNoPain“ Project (Head: Prof. Dr. med. Sommer).

The research focuses on the combination of virtual reality and neurofeedback-training in the chronic pain treatment.
Beyond research, she enjoys debating, foreign language learning and visiting her country of origin, Greece.

Klara Gregorova is a PhD researcher in the research group "Learning and Motivation in Developmental Psychopathology and Psychotherapy" (Head: Prof. Dr. Andrea Reiter).
She joins the RTG2660 as an associated PhD student and plans to research interactions of mood, self-esteem and reward learning.

Klara studied psychology at the University of Frankfurt, where she worked on computational models of visual word recognition.
Outside of research, she enjoys playing piano, reading, and hiking.

Maria Waltmann is a doctoral researcher in the Neuroscience in Developmental Psychiatry Lab (PI: Prof. Deserno) and joins the RTG2660 as an associated PhD student.

Her research focusses on reinforcement learning, how it can be measured reliably, its development across the lifespan and its involvement in psychiatric disorders, specifically binge-eating disorder.
Prior to joining Prof. Deserno's lab, Maria obtained her Master's at King College London, where she investigated striatal functional connectivity in schizotypy.
Outside of research, she enjoys good food, listening to podcasts and going to the theatre.

Nina Seiffert is a doctoral researcher in the Defense Circuits Lab https://www.defense-circuits-lab.com of Prof. Philip Tovote and joins the RTG2660 as an associated PhD student. Her research project, which is part of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network Cerebellum & Emotional Networks, aims to identify specific neuronal correlates within the cerebellar-periaqueductal grey circuits for distinct integrated defence states. To investigate this, she will evoke different defensive states associated with varying levels of fear and anxiety while simultaneously recording neuronal activity using deep-brain calcium imaging in freely behaving mice.

Prior to her PhD studies, Nina obtained a Bachelor's degree in Cognitive Science at the University of Osnabrück and a Master's degree in Neuroscience at the University of Helsinki.

Outside the lab, Nina enjoys cooking, skiing, hiking, and travelling.

Gabriela Neubert da Silva is a doctoral researcher in the Defense Circuits Lab (Prof. Philip Tovote).
She joins the RTG2660 as an associated PhD student. Her PhD project is part of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Innovative Training Network Cerebellum & Emotional Networks. The first goal is to characterize the connections between the cerebellum and brain areas involved in emotional processing (focusing on the periaqueductal grey). The second step is to manipulate selected pathways during behavioral fear and anxiety assays, addressing the causal relationship between selected neural populations and defensive states.

Gabriela got her bachelor’s degree in Biomedicine and her master’s degree in Pharmacology, both of them at Federal University of Paraná (UFPR).

Besides science, she enjoys practicing yoga, playing the ukulele, listening to music, reading and hiking. 

Zora Schickardt is a doctoral researcher in the Cell Culture and Biomarkers Research Group at the Center of Mental Health and joins the RTG2660 as an associated PhD student. In her PhD project, she investigates mitochondrial function in cell models of PARK2 copy number variant carriers with adult Attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). In a previous study, the evaluation of the cellular phenotype of human dermal fibroblast and dopaminergic neurons derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells revealed impaired energy metabolism and hints for mitochondrial dysfunction in ADHD/PARK2 CNVs carriers compared to wildtype controls. Based on this, she will conduct further analyses of mitochondrial alterations in ADHD-related cell types such as cortical neurons and blood-brain barrier endothelia to validate mitochondrial dysfunction as a potential target for novel therapies and to investigate a possible role of BBB dysfunction in ADHD. Besides her research, she enjoys being in nature and relaxing on the banks of the Main.

Chantal Hampf is a doctoral researcher in the Functional Genomics group and joins the RTG2660 as an associated PhD student.

In her PhD project, she focuses on molecular aspects of the underlying causes and treatments of affective disorders (anxiety disorders, depression).
Therefore she aims to replicate several risk genes for anxiety disorders from genome-wide association studies in own samples.
This samples should also be functionally characterized, using different psychometric questionnaires, mRNA expression profiles, imaging data and psychological behavioral tests in cooperation with different research groups.

Prior to her PhD, she studied pharmacy at the University of Frankfurt and received her approbation as pharmacist.

Jessica Reinhart is a doctoral researcher and joins the RTG2660 as an associated PhD student.

She is part of the SFB/TRR 58 “Fear, Anxiety and Anxiety Disorders” in project Z02 “Dynamics of fear generalization processes and their predictive value for the development of anxiety-related psychopathologies in adolescents and adults: the role of age, life events, coping strategies and (epi-) genetic factors”.

Ulkar Huseynzade is a PhD Researcher in Prof. Eder’s lab. She joins the RTG2660 as an associated Doctoral Researcher. 

She is interested in the mechanisms of approach-avoidance behavior with providing a useful testbed. She is also curious about finding out how threat-related avoidance can be minimized by approach incentives and how the different individual traits affect this process.