Niels is broadly interested in natural genetic variation. After completing his diploma thesis, which involved combing the vineyards of Southern Germany for feral vines and grape phylloxera, he joined the Jiménez-Gómez lab at the Max Planck Institute for Plant Breeding Research in Cologne. He was awarded a doctoral degree from the University of Cologne, having written his thesis on the impact of domestication on the circadian clock and flowering time of tomato. After a postdoc at the Copenhagen Plant Science Centre in Denmark on the rules and roles of divergent non-coding transcription, Niels joined the Thünen Institute in the summer of 2017. Currently, he is trying to unlock some of the amazing natural potential of forest trees for breeding and conservation.

Annika joined the lab in 2018. As a technician in the 'poplar dioecy' project she manages our tissue culture, extracts high-molecular-weight DNA for long-read sequencing and organizes hundreds of seedlings in the greenhouse. We are super happy to have her!

Conny joined the lab in 2022. With previous experience in QTL mapping in honey bee, sexual selection in Chinook salmon and molecular analyses of hypoxia tolerance of diving mammals, she is now focusing on high-throughput phenotyping of beech trees. By combining this phenotypic information with genomic data, Conny will contribute to our understanding of the genetic basis of different traits in a keystone forest tree species.

With a great interest in biodiversity complexity and genetic diversity, Melina started studying 'biodiversity, ecology and evolution' at the University of Göttingen, Germany, where she graduated with a bachelor’s degree. She continued her studies by attending an interdisciplinary master’s degree program in biodiversity at Ruhr University and the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, focusing on molecular ecology and population genetics. Her master's thesis on "Genetic variation of the massive coral Porites lutea at the Samui Archipel in Thailand" was part of a collaboration between the Ruhr University and Core Sea South East Asia in Thailand. Currently, Melina is pursuing a doctorate in biology in connection with the 'FraxForFuture' project.