Barbara Di Ventura PhD

Dr. Di Ventura gained her degree in Computer Science from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” after which she carried out her PhD in the group of Luis Serrano at the EMBL, Heidelberg, where she worked in the fields of systems and synthetic biology, combining experiments with mathematical modeling. After finishing her PhD she joined the Sourjik lab at the ZMBH, where she studied the bacterial Min system.

In 2011, Dr Di Ventura joined the department of Roland Eils, in the BioQuant, Heidelberg as the head of the Synthetic Biology group. In 2016 she became an independent group leader there, her lab, the Molecular and Cellular Engineering group is interested in understanding the mechanisms used by cells to control processes in space and time using an interdisciplinary approach that combines molecular and cellular biology with synthetic biology and mathematical modeling. A special focus of the lab is optogenetics, that is, the use of light to externally control protein function and localization in individual living cells. In September 2017 her lab will move to the Centre For Biological Signaling Studies at the University of Freiburg.