Our Team

  • A woman with shoulder-length brown hair and glasses standing in front of an aquarium filled with blue-lit jellyfish.

    Dr. Tatyana Lebedeva (Alexander von Humboldt Fellow)

    Tatyana Lebedeva is a postdoc working on the mesoderm development in ctenophores. @tclebedeva.bsky.social

  • A smiling young woman holding a large rope feature or sculpture, standing in a room with shelves containing jars and containers.

    Dr. Nadezhda Rimskaya Korsakova (iDiv Flexpool Fellow)

    Nadia Rimskaya-Korsakova is working on gutless worms of all kind and their chemosymbiosis with microbionts. She is expert on volume EM @rimskaya.bsky.social

  • A young man with glasses and light brown hair, wearing a dark blazer and black shirt, smiling against a plain white background.

    Prof. Dr. Andreas Hejnol

    Prof. Dr. Andreas Hejnol is interested in marine invertebrate development and evolution. He is Professor for Zoology at the Institute for Zoology and Evolutionary research and the director of the Phyletic Museum Jena (https://phyletisches-museum.uni-jena.de/en/museum-main-2/).

  • A woman with glasses, smiling, holds a microscope in a laboratory setting.

    Katja Felbel

    Katja Felbel is Technician in the Jena Team and does histology, electron microscopy and expansion microscopy.

  • A woman wearing a red jacket smiling outdoors on a grassy and hilly landscape.

    Elli Grimmer

    Elli Grimmer is technical support in the team in Jena and is managing the laboratory in the area of molecular biology.

  • A woman with dark wavy hair tied with a scrunchie smiling outdoors on a sunny day.

    Rommy Petersohn

    Rommy Petersohn is technical support in the team and is managing the larger equipment items such as the CLSM, SEM and Slidescanner. She is expert in histology and immunocytochemistry.

  • A young woman with shoulder-length light brown hair, wearing a black shirt, smiling and standing outdoors in front of green foliage.

    Lisa-Marie Barf

    Lisa-Marie Barf is a PhD student in bioinformatics. She is analyzing genomes of our animals and studies the developmental of nematomorphs. @lisa_barf

  • A man with glasses and a beard smiling at a large aquarium with a sturgeon fish swimming nearby.

    Dr. Stanislav Kremnyov

    Stanislav is postdoc and he is studying the embryology of ctenophores and cnidarians.

  • Smiling woman with glasses outdoors with mountains in the background.

    Francesca Pinton (Deutsche Studienstiftung Fellow)

    Francesca Pinton is PhD student and is studying the symbiosis and the immune system of acoelomorphs.

  • A young man with black hair wearing a black jacket outdoors on a sunny day, with houses and trees in the background.

    Dr. Shumpei Yamakawa

    Shumpei is postdoc and is studying the evolution of ecdysis in the Ecdysozoa. @shumpei-yamakawa.bsky.social

  • A young woman with shoulder-length black hair and bangs sitting indoors near a window, wearing a burgundy hoodie.

    Nina Levin

    After a short time as technician in the lab, Nina Levin enrolled as PhD student in the MSC Network ZooCELL (https://zoocell.eu). She works on the evolution of gravitational sense organs in animals.

  • Young woman with dark hair

    Dr. Minato Miyake

    Minato will arrive in July and work on ctenophores and the nervous system development. She received her PhD from the Okinawa Institute of Technology.