About Us

This competition is organised by a non-profit organisation eduB in collaboration with IST Austria.

Barbora Trubenová

Barbora is a former physicist (Biophysics, Comenius University), turned evolutionary biologist (PhD, The University of Manchester). After studying the evolution of social behaviour, she decided it was too depressing and started studying adaptations in a changing environment, trying to identify what we should do to survive the climate change.

Barbora is a former Trojsten alumna and seminars (especially the Physics one) played an important role in her life. She is hoping that this correspondence seminar in evolutionary biology can show students that evolutionary biology is at least as logical and cool as physics!

Kristína Hudáková

Kristína received her Master degree in 2003 and a PhD in Zoology from The Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia in 2007.

Now working as a high school teacher at C S Lewis Bilingual High School, Bratislava, she ensures that the content of the articles is suitable for the high school audience. As a part of her teaching efforts, she developed a collection of activities developed for high school students to promote awareness of the basic concepts of evolution, and thus facilitate a better understanding of a wide range of biology topics.

The collection was published with the help of ESEB Outreach initiative in Slovak. Part of the book has been translated into English and German.

Kristina develops the projects and comes up with the questions. She also corrects your projects and gives you feedback! Plus, she also does whatever is needed :)

Jarmila Šimková

Jarmila is currently pursuing her Bachelor degree in Sustainable Biotechnology in Copenhagen, Denmark and in the past was doing an internship at Slovak Academy of Sciences.

During high-school she competed in the first year of STEB and through the seminar and its articles found evolution fascinating. To discover the same passion among younger students, Jarmila decided to help with the organisation.

Jarka is in charge of the questions for the A category. She also corrects your projects and gives you feedback!

Katarína Majerová

Katarína decided to study Bioinformatics in Olomouc, Czech Republic. During high school, she was volunteering with competitions in physics and mathematics for elementary schools. Now she is very happy to take part in another field - Evolutionar Biology!

Katka puts all the questions into Google Forms, making life easier for you and us!

Tamara Schenner

Tamara just started studying Biology at the University of Vienna, Austria this year. A decision that was actually inspired by STEB! During the last two years she participated in the series and joined the team to help others to find the beauty of Evolutionary Biology, too.

Samo Pauliny

Samo is helping with graphic design and other minor tasks for this year’s series. He has recently graduated from Gymnazium Jur Hronec in Bratislava and is currently studying at Masaryk University, programme Experimental Biology with specalization in molecular biology and genetics.

Yvonne Kemper

Yvonne is a mathematician-turned-science writer working in the communications department at IST Austria. Fond of both commas and getting people interested in science, she helps with proofreading the STEB articles -- and has learned a lot about evolutionary biology along the way!

Yvonne makes sure everything is clear and sounds nice :-)

Hildegard Uecker

Hildegard is a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön, Germany. Her research focuses on adaptation in populations that are severely challenged either by environmental change (natural populations) or by exposure to drug treatment (pathogen populations). She hopes that insights from her research can contribute to improving conservation efforts and assist in decelerating the emergence of drug resistance.

STEB duties:

Hildegard writes articles and comes up with the questions. She may organise STEB in Germany in the future!

Lucia Máhriková

Lucia is a teacher in Chemistry and Biology that is never getting bored of exploring world around us. She studied pedagogy of Chemistry and Biology at Faculty of Science, University of Ostrava. Having a passion for learning new things, she wants to spread acquired knowledge to share it with others. Besides teaching, she likes to sew, bake and dig in the soil planting plants.

Himani Sachdeva (himani.sachdeva@ist.ac.at)

Himani Sachdeva received her PhD in 2014 from the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai, India, where she worked on statistical physics models of biological transport. During her PhD, she was a teaching assistant for a graduate course in statistical physics. At IST, she is working on eco-evolutionary modelling of adaptation and speciation. She regularly presents her research work at scientific conferences (StatPhys, PopGroup) and in scientific journals (Phys Rev Lett, Scientific Reports, Phys Rev E, Evolution (under review)).

She is interested in science writing and communicating evolutionary biology in a more innovative way to high school students through examples and contexts that arise in their natural environments.

Monika Machalová

Monika Machalová has just begun the journey of studying medicine at Masaryk's University in Brno, Czech Republic. In her free time, she engages in volunteering with p-mat, an organization that creates seminars for elementary school students in the fields of mathematics and physics. Discovering STEB, she decided to invest her energy in spreading biology as well.

Michal Hledík

Mišo is a PhD student at IST Austria. Before coming to IST, he studied physics in Bratislava and helped high school students prepare for physics competitions. His research is about mathematical modelling of interactions between genes (called gene regulation). If one carries a mutation in a specific gene, how does it change the activity of all the other genes? And what if one carries several mutations in several genes? To address questions like these, Mišo hopes to combine thermodynamic and evolutionary theories.

STEB duties:

Mišo writes articles, those with math in them. He also organises the summer visit to IST Austria.

Katarína Karáseková

Katka, too, started as a STEB participant before joining the organisers. She now studies Sustainable Development and Biology at the University of St Andrews in Scotland (the university where William and Kate met when they both studied there).

Her hobbies include learning languages, mainly French, cooking and excessive comsumption of chocolate. :-)

Katka is responsible for overseeing Google Classroom and updating the webpage.

Fedor Župník

Fedor is a year 1 student of Biochemistry at the University of Glasgow in Scotland. Back in his high school days he participated in STEB for three years, which ultimately led him to study life science instead of mathematics. Fedor is also a volunteer for p-mat, the organization behind maths-and-physics-themed seminars.

Steb duties: Fedor helps anywhere where he’s needed, mainly with checking questions and projects.

Tomáš Jurčík

Tomáš is currently studying embryology at Masaryk’s University in Czech Republic.

During high school he participated in STEB and considers it utterly interesting. He found that this seminary sparked his interest in evobio and other evolutionary sciences whilst providing entertaining introduction into this world. Therefore he joined organisation team to help ignite enthusiasm in other likeminded individuals.

Authors:

Daria Shipilina

I’m an evolutionary biologist working in IST Austria. I’m interested in a broad range of topics, such as speciation genomics in hybrid zones, the evolution of colouration and animal vocalization. In my research I use a multidisciplinary approach, combining bioinformatics, theoretical biology, ecology and behaviour studies. I’m enthusiastic about working with natural populations and conducted field research in remote and not very remote locations, such as the Pyrenees, Ural Mountains, Central Siberia and Moscow city suburbs.

Reka Kelemen

Reka Kelemen is a PhD student at IST Austria. She is interested in using computational tools and mathematical modeling to answer questions in evolutionary biology. Currently she is working on a gamete killer, a stretch of DNA in house mice that gives superpowers to sperm cells carrying it by disabling competing sperm during the race for the female egg cells. Inspired by the wonders of evolution, she is also interested in science popularization.

Gemma Puixeu Sala

Gemma is a PhD student at IST Austria. She is interested in understanding the conflict of interests between males and females, and how it contributes to the generation of such big differences between both sexes. To address these questions she uses a combination of evolutionary theory and bioinformatic data analysis.

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