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Chromatin Structure & Rhythms Lab
Lab News and Photos
Some random assortment of lab photos for you to see a glimpse of "day in the life" of our lab.
Weinachtsmarkt Gift Exchange
December 2025
As per lab tradition, an end-of-year party at one of Vienna's beautiful Christmas markets and a "Secret Santa" gift exchange.
Happy holidays everyone!
ISTA Young Scientist Symposium (YSS)
October/November 2025
Joanna, Dari and Pavol present their work as posters at the 2025 ISTA Young Scientist Symposium.
Pavol also gives a talk and wins best poster at the Ph.D. Welcome Day!
8th Austrian CryoEM Symposium
November 2025
Alicia co-organizes 8th Austrian CryoEM (ACE) Symposium at ISTA, hosting ~150 attendees! The schedule was action-packed with lots of exciting new discoveries enabled with cryoEM/ET!
Dari presents at MOPS
October 2025
Dari presents her work at the internal seminar series "MOnthly Protein Seminars" (MOPS) where students and postdocs give progress reports to the institute.
ISTA Life Sciences Retreat
October 2025
The group had lots of fun getting to know other research going on at ISTA and were blown away at the diversity of topics covered within even just the life sciences at the institute!
Pavol also presented work on the "virtual cell", describing our efforts to combine molecular dynamics and modelling with cryoET simulations to enable visual proteomics!
Joanna's defends her master's thesis
September 2025
Joanna presented her master's thesis work "Functional properties of protein assemblies in chromatin regulation and circadian systems" with highest honors from Jagellonian University. Joanna was brave enough to dig into protein design with the Praetorius group on campus and found some exciting results. To be shared soon!
Congratulations, Joanna!
Lab tours and outreach
August 2025
Pavol, Helen and Alicia led school tour groups through the lab from the Vifzack Academy, showing them what research looks like and teaching a bit about our favorite little green algae, "Chlamy" aka Dr. Reinhard Chlaminski, and how it's biology is tightly controlled by the sun, in ways that may not be so obvious.
First frozen Chlamy on a grid!
July 2025
Helen joined and hit the ground running. She the lab's first Chlamy cells on a grid for cryoET! Now to the FIB and into the microscope!
CHLAMY 2025
July 2025
Helen and Alicia attend the CHLAMY 2025 conference in Münster, Germany and both gave talks! It was a nice introduction to the very welcoming community and we learned lots about our favorite little algae, started new collaborations, got lots of good tips and got to catch up with old colleagues.
Susana's first talk
July 2025
Susana Nunes, an intern in the lab for nearly a year, gave her first public scientific talk at our MOPS series: "A winding tale of DNA across the tree of life," and nailed it.
Bye-bye BBQ and museum
June 2025
To say celebrate summer and say goodbye to McClain, a visiting PhD student from Carrie Partch's lab in UCSC who came for a few months, we had a lab BBQ, complete with our resident chef, Vigo (4 years old).
Also, to say goodbye to Susana, an intern in the lab, and enjoy some of our local cultural offerings, we visited the Museum Gugging just above the ISTA campus. Highly recommend!
Inserm workshop on cryoET
& Night Science
June 2025
Susana and Helen attend the Inserm workshop on cryoET in France, and loved every second of it :)
Alicia also attends the Woodstock of Biology conference in Prague and has a blast. A conference full of improv and walk-up songs, creating a relaxed, safe and creative atmosphere. We hope to do a "night science" workshop at ISTA!
Lab's first birthday!
April 2025
A year has passed since the initial interim lab opened its doors and some brave souls came to join Alicia in April 2024 to start the Chromatin Structure & Rhythms Lab. A huge thank you to all of you who took that leap! Look how far we've come!
ÄKTA fun
April 2025
The protein whisperer and biochemistry wonder, Orla and McClain on a typical day having some fun at the ÄKTA, the machine with which nearly every biochemist has a love-hate relationship with.
Looks like today was a good day ;)
Dari passes her qualifying exam!
March 2025
Dari, the lab's first Ph.D. student, successfully passed her qualifying exam! Her project focuses on how the circadian transcription factors interact with cofactors and histone modifications to achieve timely tissue-specific gene expression.
Looking forward to what we discover - go Dari!
EMBL In Situ Workshop
February 2025
Pavol and Alicia attend the EMBL In situ structural biology workshop in Heidelberg. It opened so many new avenues for us! Now we're collaborating with a molecular dynamics group, learned new AI-cryoET applications, and got to reunite with friends from the Engel lab.
During the party, Pavol and Alicia even jumped on stage with the band to do an impromptu rendition of "Flowers" and Pavol nailed a killer drum solo in song "Sax".
Thanks EMBL, for the fun times!
Lab's first Weinachtsmarkt 2024
December 2024
Started our lab tradition of going to one of the beautiful christmas markets in Vienna and doing a secret santa gift exchange. Then out for dinner. Good company, gifts and gluhwein, what more could you want?!
Moonstone Lab Warming Party
October 2024
To celebrate the finishing of many labs being built in Moonstone, including the Feng, Praetorius and Bravo groups, we had a big Halloween themed party! Complete with pumpkin carving, costumes and festive decor. Now to get some exciting experiments cooking in the new shiny lab space!
New shiny lab space!
October 2024
The final lab space finished being built and was handed over! Such an intense yet rewarding process to design a lab from scratch. A huge shoutout to the ISTA construction team, especially Juli and Felix who were heroes during the entire process. And also supportive new neighbors ;)
Life Sciences Retreat
October 2024
The lab attended the first ISTA Life Sciences retreat hosted in between some beautiful Austrian vineyards. Alicia gave a talk and the lab got to meet many new colleagues. Was one to remember!
First cryoEM data collections!
July 2024
Susana, together with Valentin from the EM facility image some of our first cryoEM samples, which ended up going to the Titan and producing a nice structure!
Way to go guys!
New lab toys
May 2024
While we're still waiting on our final lab space, doesn't mean we can't start experimenting and playing with some fun new toys in the interim space. Deepthi, who joined as an ISTA-fellow and Onkar, a scientific intern in the lab (top photo) were one of the first people to get the lab up and going.
The lab also got a toy capsule machine for the office, more of a hit with the children, but is a fun lab addition.
Flo sandwich
April 2024
Alicia caught between her two favorite 'Flo's, Florian Praetorius and Florian Schur, structural bio colleagues at ISTA, at the first faculty retreat at Kahlenberg near Vienna. Was a beautiful day for site seeing! too bad we were inside all day...
An empty room
April 2024
Alicia starts the lab at ISTA and is joined in April with lab manager Chris Dunworth to start getting the ball rolling. Excited by what is to come, yet a bit overwhelmed but what all needs to be built, but it's better with company! Thanks, Chris!
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