During my diploma thesis in the group of Dr. Annette G. Beck-Sickinger at the University of Leipzig, I was trained in biochemistry as well as molecular and cell biology while studying the regulation and localization of G-protein coupled receptors in living cells. During my PhD thesis in the group of Dr. Ulrich Hahn at the University of Hamburg I continued working on cell surface receptor proteins and started to transition to the field of RNA biology. By performing SELEX (systematic evolution of ligands by exponential enrichment) I generated RNA aptamers – small functional RNA molecules – that bind the human interleukin-6 receptor (IL-6R). In November 2012, I joined the laboratory of Dr. Thomas Tuschl at The Rockefeller University as a postdoctoral fellow. Part of his research focuses on the functional characterization of RNA-binding proteins (RBPs). Importantly, RBPs or derived mutated variants are often linked to cellular disease states. Therefore the identification of RNA targets of particular RBPs and their role in mRNA metabolism should inevitably lead to a better understanding of post-transcriptional gene-regulatory mechanisms and disease caused by mutations in RBPs or de-regulated RNA metabolisms. Recently, I characterized the function of the TIA1 family of RNA binding proteins and their involvement in the cellular stress response. The article ‘The TIA1 RNA-Binding Protein Family Regulates EIF2AK2-Mediated Stress Response and Cell Cycle Progression’ was published in Molecular Cell, 2018. I am familiar with numerous biochemical, cell and molecular biological techniques, genomics, RNA sequencing and data analyses pipelines that are required to conduct high quality RNA biology research.