Marion Silies (group leader)
Marion is a professor for neurobiology and head of the 'Neural Circuits Lab' at JGU since the beginning of 2019. Before, she has been a group leader at the European Neuroscience Institute in Göttingen since the beginning of 2015. She trained as a Postdoc in Tom Clandinin’s lab at Stanford University where she mapped and characterized motion detection circuits and established the InSITE toolkit, a collection of driver lines that allows genetic access to in principle any cell type in the brain. Marion obtained her PhD in 2009 at the University of Münster (Germany), where she worked in the lab of Christian Klämbt on the migration of glial cells. She holds a diploma in Biology.
Scientists
Camille Guillermin (Postdoc)
Camille is curious about understanding the developmental mechanisms that shape neurons and how these can be linked to successfully process visual information. During her Ph.D. in Dr. Jonathan Enriquez's team at the Institute of Functional Genomics in Lyon, Camille combined genetics, confocal microscopy, single-cell sequencing, and bioinformatics to unravel the development of diverse adult leg muscle morphologies. She successfully defended her thesis in 2023 by identifying distinct muscle precursor subpopulations and delineating their roles in the spatio-temporal development of muscle diversity. The IGFL in Lyon is also where she started her research journey in 2018, studying how motoneurons acquire their morphology, and where her passion for developmental biology was fueled.
Miriam Henning (Postdoc)
Miriam obtained a Bachelor in Biology (2010) and a Master’s degree in Neurobiology, Behaviour and Evolution in 2016 at the University of Bielefeld. For the latter, she studied depth perception in the visual system of the blowfly by combining electrophysiological recordings and modelling in the Egelhaaf lab. Since 2017, she aims to understand the organization of neuronal circuits to extract and calculate behaviour relevant information from the visual input in Drosophila. She studies the neuronal circuit behind motion vision by combining forward genetics, brain imaging and behavioural approaches.
Miriam defended her PhD thesis "Mechanisms of local and global motion computation", and did so with excellence.
Jonas Peper (Postdoc)
Jonas is a biochemist and molecular biologist who is now bringing his expertise to develop tools for the synapse-specific analysis of neural circuits. He obtained his PhD 2020 in Molecular Medicine at the Universitätsmedizin Göttingen. There, he established a tool to study native protein interactions in cardiomyocytes and analyzed their protein distribution using super resolution microscopy. In general, he is interested in understanding the functional relevance of protein interactions and networks.
Studying this at the level of synapses will help to develop specific tools for a targeted activity block, which will allow the manipulation of single neuronal connections within a network.
Luisa Fernanda Ramirez Ochoa (Postdoc)
Luisa is a physicist interested in neuronal information process at the circuit and population level. She aims to understanding how environmental information is hierarchically processed in visual systems, from concrete to abstract visual representations. During her PhD at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais in Brazil and her research stay at Princeton University, she investigated the principles of visual information processing in 1) peripheral circuits and 2) neuronal populations. In peripheral circuits, she studied how natural spectral stimuli have driven the evolution of circuits by developing a data-driven theoretical framework based on efficient coding and neuronal dynamics. In neuronal populations, she investigated the statistical properties of spiking activity from large neuronal populations by developing a theoretical framework based on both the Bottleneck compression algorithm and ideas of renormalization group. Luisa has joined the Silies lab to investigate the principles of dynamic coding in the peripheral visual system of the fly both at the circuit and population level.
Annika Celine Bast (PhD student)
Annika is interested in the evolution of visual processing properties. Therefore, she aims to analyze the visual properties of different Drosophila species in behavioral studies and by in vivo calcium imaging. To achieve this, she is also generating novel transgenic tools. Annika is an associated student of the GenEvo program at JGU and thus part of the International PhD program (IPP) at JGU and IMB Mainz. where she is excited to interact with peers interested in the combination of evolution and gene regulation. She received her Bachelor's (2018) and Master's (2021) degrees in biology from JGU of Mainz. For the latter she studied the role of globins in Drosophila melanogaster in Prof. Thomas Hankeln's lab.
Jacqueline Cornean (PhD student)
Jacqueline is interested if and how variability of neuronal properties contributes to robust visual processing. Therefore, she studies the variability of specific neuronal cell types in Drosophila, as well as the origin of this variability, by characterizing neurons and their connectivity both functionally and anatomically. Before joining the Silies lab in 2021, she studied Biology at the University of Freiburg. During her M.Sc thesis in the Straw lab, she investigated a possible link in the navigational circuitry between foraging and the internal nutrient state of the fly.
Maria Ioannidou (research assistant)
Maria fell in love with neuroscience, and Mainz, during an Erasmus Plus internship. After completing her Bachelor's In Physics from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki she moved her life from Greece to Germany to do a MSc neuroscience, and work on connectomics in the Silies lab in parallel. She contributed to the Flywire connectome and for her MSc, she analyzed synaptic connectivity in visual circuitry. Because she still didn't get enough of it, she'll stay for a bit as a research assistant.
Lena Lörsch (PhD student)
Lena is interested how the brain handles (environmental and genetic) perturbations. She started to look at environmental challenges during her MSc thesis in the Silies lab, where she investigated neuronal connectivity in the fly visual system upon different developmental temperatures. She will now also explore genetic "conditions" that have been linked to the development of the neurodegenerative disease ALS, in a collaboration with Dorothee Dormann's lab at JGU. She studied neuroscience for her MSc and molecular biology for her BSc in Mainz.
Navinchandra Puppala (PhD student)
Navin is interested in how sensory information is compiled to drive a particular behavior. He studies the neural mechanisms of multisensory integration in the Drosophila brain. Before joining the Silies lab in 2024, Navin worked as a researcher at KMC Manipal, India. There, he investigated the effects of social isolation on fly behavior. He obtained his integrated bachelors and masters degree in chemical engineering and biological sciences from BITS Pilani Hyderabad, India in 2021.
Freya Thurn (PhD student)
Freya is curious to understand what drives robust behaviors, and what perturbations can make them fail. She therefore studies the molecular mechanisms and neural circuits underlying robust contrast computation in rapidly changing conditions. Moreover, she holds a fellowship at the Mainz Research School of Translational Biomedicine (TransMed) at the University Hospital in Mainz. For this she designed a novel approach to “humanize” the fly genome using genetic engineering to study the pathology of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Freya was the first student from Mainz to join the Silies lab for her MSc thesis (2021) where she used in vivo two-photon imaging and pharmacological approaches to elucidate the molecular basis of luminance-invariant visual processing. Freya obtained a BSc degree in Biology in 2019 in Roland Strauss’ lab.
Pradeep Trimbake (PhD student)
Pradeep is interested in the overall computation of motion signals in the higher-order structures of the fly brain when it undertakes relevant behaviours. Using pose estimation techniques and brain imaging, he aims to understand how form governs function and vice versa. He obtained a dual BS-MS degree in Biology from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Pune (IISER), India. There, he worked with Zebra finches under the guidance of Dr Raghav Rajan and investigated the feasibility of utilizing animations and a game engine to study courtship behaviour. For his MSc thesis, he used pose estimation tools to automize the analysis of eye-closure behaviour during sleep swimming in Canada geese at the MPI for Biological Intelligence with Dr Andrea Ferretti and Dr Niels Rattenborg.
Juan Felipe Vargas Fique (PhD student)
Juan is currently a PhD student in the lab. He is interested in understanding neural circuits as systems that are more than the sum of their parts. In his work he primarily asks how the intricate connectivity in the visual system influences reliable motion vision, across visual scene conditions. To achieve this, he combines experimental physiology and computational techniques.
As a MSc student of the International Max Planck Research School (IMPRS) for Neurosciences in Göttingen, Juan investigated the role of ligand gated chloride channels on contrast selectivity using pharmacology, genetics and imaging techniques. Juan obtained a B.Sc. in Biology from Universidad De Los Andes (Colombia, 2015).
Neel Wagh (PhD student)
Neel is a student of the International PhD Programme, a doctoral programme with a focus on Gene Regulation, Epigenetics & Genome Stability, coordinated by the Institute of Molecular Biology Mainz (IMB). He aims to understand the molecular mechanisms underlying the functional properties of neurons that extract different features from the visual environment. For this, he employs reverse genetics approaches in combination with in vivo two-photon brain imaging and behavioural assays.
Neel holds a dual BS-MS degree in Biology from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Pune (IISER), India. During his Master’s Thesis, he uncovered a maternal effect gene in Drosophila development and worked towards the functional characterisation of it during the embryonic development using genetic tools.
Students
Christian Daniel (M.Sc. student, joint with Martelli lab)
Paulami Dey (Internship)
Dorfam Rastgarmoghaddam (M.Sc. student)
Technical Support
Jonas Chojetzki (technician)
Jonas joined the Silies lab in 2017, after finishing his training as a technician (BTA). He is the go to person for all molecular biology questions, and the first to dare the move to Mainz. Despite having worked in a fly lab for three years, he still claims that he does not know how mites look like, which the lab is very proud of.
Simone Renner (technician)
Simone Renner is a "Mainzer Urgestein" (translates to "prehistoric rock", but that seems just wrong), which means that she already worked with flies, in Mainz, long before we did. So in a way, we joined her and not vice versa. She knows where everything in the lab can be found and makes sure it stays this way. Together with Jonas, she is currently generating a lot of transgenic fly lines.
Administrative Support
Sabine Schmitt
Sabine is the first friendly face that you will meet when you enter our premises. She also has been working at JGU Mainz for much longer than the rest of us, and knows everything and everyone (we think). In addition to handling all admin, she has an open ear for everyone in the lab and also happily takes on tasks which certainly were not part of her job description (like looking after the 1-yr old lab affiliates).
Lab alumni
Postdocs
Ronny Rosner (until 2024, now Assistent Professor at Bilkent University, Ankara, Turkey)
Junaid Akhtar (until 2020, now Principle Scientist / Team Leader for RNA Biology, Evotec SE)
PhD students
Burak Gür (2022), postdoc with Johannes Felsenberg at the Friedrich Miescher Institut (FMI) Basel, Switzerland
Sebastian Molina Obando (2022), now exploring a career in education in Barcelona, Spain
Miriam Henning (2021), currently postdoc in the lab
Madhura Ketkar (2023), now postdoc with Jan Clemens, Uni Oldenburg
Luis Giordano Ramos-Traslosheros (2019), now postdoc with Carlos Ponce, Harvard Medical School
Katja Sporar (2019), now postdoc in the Nordström lab at Flinder's University Australia
M.Sc. students
| Maria Ioannidou (2024) | Deniz Yuzak (2018) |
| Lena Lörsch (2024) | Burak Gür (2017) |
| Marwa Al Sakloul (2022) | Sebastian Molina-Obando (2017) |
| Freya Thurn (2021) | Teresa Lüffe (2016) |
| Tihana Hamzay (2020) |
| Georg Bullinger (2019) |
| Marwin Seifert (2018) |
| Juan Felipe Vargas (2018) |
| Cagatay Aydin (2018) |
| Elsa Steinfath (2018) |
B.Sc. students
| Iona Bergerhoff (2024) | Philipp Berg (2021) |
| Azize Karakut (2024) | Leah Köth (2021) |
| Lukas Fladung (2024) | Nathalie Grosse (2021) |
| Mica Armauer (2024) | Annalena Oswald (2021) |
| Laura Thriemer Jimenez (2024) | |
| Kilian Born (2023) | |
| Lena Lörsch (2023) | |
| Sarah Omar (2022) | |
| Ellen Picard (2022) | |
| Sarah Mirabella (2022) |