Thurley group - Systems Biology of Inflammation (ITB and DRFZ Berlin)

The mammalian immune response depends on the interaction and collaboration of many, highly individual cells. In particular, a network of interacting lymphocytes is critical for the course of an inflammatory response, which under certain circumstances can become self-sustained and thus evoke chronic diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis. Our recent work has emphasized the need for mathematical analysis in the regulation of immune responses (Thurley et al., PLoS Comp Biol 2015; Hammer et al., Nat Immunol 2018; Thurley, Wu, Altschuler, Cell Systems 2018). We develop and apply mathematical modeling and data analysis techniques to investigate the regulation of immune responses, in close collaboration with physicians and immuno-biologists.

The Systems Biology of Inflammation group is located at the German Rheumatism Research Center (DRFZ) and funded by the Leibniz association and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft.

Visit us at DRFZ Berlin. An overview of previous publications can be found here.

Dr. Kevin Thurley (group leader)

Philipp Burt, Msc. Biophysics (PhD student)

Zuzanna Borek (PhD student, guest scientist)

Paraskevi Voula Tassopoulou, PharmD (Master student, Charite Molecular Medicine)

Gustav Geißler, Bsc. Physics (Master student, HU Physics)

Lukas Kiwitz (Bacherlor student, HU Biology)

Positions for postdocs and PhD students available: Click here for a job description (DRFZ pages). Please send applications by email, including CV and motivation letter.

Bachelor and master students are always welcome. We seek highly motivated students with a background in (bio-)physics, mathematics or systems biology. Projects typically include a combination of biological data analysis and mathematical modeling, in particular analysis of single-cell sequencing data, quantitative image analysis, spatial and stochastic modeling techniques, as well as ordinary differential equation models. We closely collaborate with wet-lab immunologists at the DRFZ.