People

DR. ALICIA K MICHAEL

After earning a Bachelor of Science degree in Biochemistry from Western Washington University, Alicia went on to complete her Ph.D. thesis research under the supervision of Dr. Carrie Partch studying transcriptional regulation within the mammalian circadian clock at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Following her PhD in the USA, Alicia continued her research in Switzerland. She worked at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, where she was advised by Dr. Nicolas Thomä, and began studies examining transcription factor engagement with chromatin. She then moved across the Rhein river to the University of Basel, Biozentrum, with Dr. Ben Engel, investigating the structural transitions of chromatin within cells using cryo-electron tomography. In April 2024, she joined the Institute of Science and Technology Austria as an Assistant Professor.

Fun fact: Alicia has been singing in rock bands since she was 16 years old and has a potentially unhealthy obsession with small things, especially guinea pigs.

DARINA BARKHATOVA

Dari completed bachelor's degree in Chemistry working on organic synthesis of drug-like small molecules and PROTACs. After that, she received a BARI fellowship and worked as an intern on non-covalent interactions and was first introduced to the chemistry of chromatin. Dari pursued joint master's programme and obtained three masters degrees in Nanotechnology, Physics Engineering and Fundamental Physics. She conducted her master's thesis on covalent peptide binders with Prof. Christian Heinis at EPFL.

In the lab Dari is unraveling the details of the interaction of circadian transcription factors and their cofactors.

Fun fact: Thanks to Dari's unresting enthusiasm and thrive to learn new things, Dari has lived in 7 countries and looking for more. Related to this, she likes to refer to herself as "Dari the explorer".

Pavol holds an MSc in Systems Engineering and Informatics and a PhD in Machine Learning from Brno University of Technology, where he focused on applying machine learning to voice pathology data. He then went on to do his postdoc at the University of Vienna and the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology, working with Philipp Grohs and David Haselbach, to develop deep learning methods for cryo-electron tomography.

Pavol leads the integration of machine learning approaches into cryoET pipelines and is the go-to computational expert for machine learning and tomography data analysis, both within the group and across ISTA.

Fun Fact: As a seasoned drummer and computer scientist, Pavol ensures the group stays in sync and up to tempo.

DR. PAVOL HARAR

DR. ORLA DUNNE

Orla completed a B.Sc. in Biochemistry at University College Dublin and an M.Sc. in Structural Biology at Queens University Belfast. This was followed by a Ph.D. in Structural Biology and Biophysics at University College London and the Institut Laue-Langevin, Grenoble, focusing on the interactions of proteins involved in innate immunity. Following this, she moved to Newcastle University, U.K., as a Post-Doctoral researcher, investigating the structure of the meiotic synaptonemal complex in the lab of Prof. Owen Davies. In 2019, Orla joined the Vienna Biocenter Core Facilities as a Senior Scientist in protein production and biophysics and later moved to BioNTech R&D Austria, working on developing alternatives to antibiotics.

She joined the Michael lab in November 2024 as Lab Manager.

Fun fact: Despite being afraid of heights, Orla once did a skydive and enjoyed every minute of it!

DR. DEEPTHI JOSEPH

IST-BRIDGE Fellow

Deepthi completed her PhD in the Molecular Biophysics Unit at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) in Bangalore, India, under the guidance of Dr. Aravind Penmatsa. There, she focused on the structural, mechanistic, and pharmacological studies of inhibitory neurotransmitter transporters using X-ray crystallography.

She then went to work with the lab of Dr. Jason McLellan as a as a postdoctoral fellow at the Univerity of Texas, Austin, investigating viral glycoprotein structures in conjunction with human antibodies, using cryo-EM and X-ray crystallography techniques to analyze viral RNA polymerase and protease structures.

In the lab, Deepthi is studying how DNA binding proteins interact with chromatin and their cofactors.

Fun Fact: Deepthi spent months preparing for her marathon debut, and when race day arrived, she dashed through the course so quickly that not a single drop had time to land on her shoes. Now she’s just waiting at the finish line, wondering when the next race will start!

EDA NUR ARSLANTAS

Eda completed her Bachelor's degree in Molecular Biology and Genetics at Abdullah Gül University and earned her Master’s in Molecular and Cellular Biology at LMU. During her Master’s studies, she conducted her thesis research and continued as a research assistant in Kikue Tachibana’s lab at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, where she gained experience in a variety of genomic and biochemical techniques.

In the lab, Eda is investigating how circadian transcription factors interact with chromatin by combining genomic approaches with mechanistic studies rooted in structural biology.

Fun Fact: To focus while studying or working on assignments, Eda loves taking long train rides - finding motivation in both the quiet journey and the destination waiting at the end.

DR. HELEN LIU

Helen completed a B.Sc. in Crop Sciences with a focus on plant molecular biology and biotechnology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This was followed by a Ph.D. in Plant Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, under the guidance of Prof. Sabeeha Merchant. Here, she investigated how photosynthetic organisms, especially green algae, adapt to low environmental iron using a combination of bioinformatics, computational and structural biology.

In the lab, she is applying both her knowledge in structural biology and the green algae, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, to understand in situ circadian chromatin organization.

Fun fact: Helen is an avid orchid grower. She competitively grew orchids at the San Francisco Orchid Society shows in high school and still maintains a collection of over 50 orchids today.

Alumni

Christopher Dunworth, Lab Manager (April 2024 - December 2024)

now Research Technician, Medical University of Innsbruck, Austria

Onkar Ghuge, Scientific Intern (May 2024 - May 2025)

now Ph.D. student at the University of Göttingen, Germany

Susana da Costa Nunes, ISTern/Scientific Intern (May 2024 - July 2025)

now a Master's student at the University of Göttingen, Germany

Joanna Doliwa, Master's student, Jagellonian University (October 2024 - September 2025)

now Scientific Intern in Christa Buecker lab, Max Perutz Labs, Vienna, Austria