SEMINAR & TALKS

iRTG Seminar Series


Time: Thursdays, 14 to 15:30



Location: W3-1-152 and online

UPCOMING TALKS



  • October 30 - Guest talk: Thomas J Lane

    DESY Hamburg, https://tjlane.github.io/


    Life at the Atomic Scale - Filming Proteins in Action


    Life exists in a chaotic soup of matter. To survive and reproduce, all life must arrange at least a small part of this chaos, to build themselves and their offspring: creating order from disorder. This ordering necessarily involves motion. It begins at the molecular level, from which larger and more complex structures are built. Therefore, in a deep sense, motion at the molecular scale is the fundamental building block from which life emerges. I seek to understand this motion. The approach adopted is direct, simple, and satisfying: film macromolecules, ideally at chemical resolution in space and time (Å and fs, respectively). I will discuss the only way we know how to achieve such resolutions with existing technology (big x-ray lasers) and share a case study in our work on photolyase, a powerful and interesting enzyme that protects the genome from UV-induced DNA damage. Time permitting, I will conclude with a brief perspective of where my field, structural biology, is headed in the age of 4th generation synchrotrons, XFELs, cryoEM/ET, and most importantly AI.


    Host: Henrik Mouritsen

  • November 6 - Krishan Kumar & Rabea Bartölke + ECR meeting

    Talks by Sig01 (Krishan) & Sig06 (Rabea)


    Chair: TBD

  • November 13 - Lecture by Takaoki Kasahara

    Lecture by Sig06 (Takaoki)


    Chair: Srdan

  • November 20 - no seminar (YRS)

    No seminar as many people will be at the Young Researchers Symposium in Hamburg, 19.-21.11.25

  • November 27 - Guest talk: Marcin Tabaka

    Guest talk by Marcin Tabaka (ICTER)


    International Centre for Translational Eye Research

    Institute of Physical Chemistry, PAS

    https://tabaka-lab.org/

  • December 4 - Guest talk: Christopher Gies

    Guest talk by Christopher Gies (UOL)

    https://uol.de/quantentheorie

  • December 11 - DARE upload & Christmas Party

    14:00 - upload your data to DARE with Johannes


    17:00 - Christmas party - more information TBA

  • (December 12 to January 9 - winter break)

    We will be on an iRTG winter break and have our first seminar in 2026 on January 15th

  • January 15 - María Jesús García Bianco & Annika Peter

    Talks by Nav07 (Jesu) & Nav02 (Annika)


    Chair: Jonathan

Past guest talks & lecture series



  • Guest talks

    • Clemens Küpper (MPI for Biological Intelligence) "Evolution through opportunities: intraspecific diversity in waders"
    • Valeria Marasco (University of Veterinary Medicine Vienna) "From development to longevity and seasonality: linking challenging exposures to the physiological fine-tuning of life histories"
    • Shonali Dhingra (TU Dresden) "Interaction of sensory modalities and adult neurogenesis in rodent navigation"
    • Vinod Kumar (University of Delhi) "Understanding complexity of the migratory phenotype in Palearctic-Indian migratory buntings"
    • Katja Reinhard (SISSA) "The Neural Underpinning of Flexibility in Survival Behaviours"
    • Humberto Fernandes (ICTER) "Molecular Modulators of Photoreceptor Dynamics: From Structure to Functional Biomarkers in the Living Retina"
    • Sercan Sayin (University of Konstanz) "The Rules of Collective Locust Marching"
    • Alina Sigaeva (KTH Stockholm) "Mapping cellular redox metabolism with quantum-based sensing and spatial proteomics"
    • Reinhard Klenke (Martin-Luther-Universität Halle Wittenberg, DE) "Spatial distribution of roosts of the greater mouse-eared bat and temporal trends in the movement of individuals between roosts"
    • Sissel Sjöberg (Lund University) "Extreme diel flight altitude changes in migratory birds"
    • Richard Holland (Prifysgol Bangor University, UK) "A (different) trivial question with a non trivial answer: do pigeons integrate familiar visual landmarks in to their navigational map?"
    • Lukas Anneser (Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, CH) "Molecular, functional, and behavioral analysis of neuromodulatory networks in zebrafish telencephalon"
    • Christian Damsgaard (Aarhus Universiteit, DK) "Neural anoxia tolerance supported the evolution of sharp vision in birds"
    • Anna Stöckl (University of Konstanz, DE) "Dynamic processing in insect vision: from single photons to flight control"
    • Barbara Helm (Swiss Ornithological Institute, CH) "Bird migration: ancient timers meet environmental change"
    • Kristen Ruegg (Colorado State University, USA) "The Bird Genoscape Project: Harnessing the Power of Genomics to Advance Migratory Bird Conservation"
    • Basil el Jundi (Norwegian University of Science and Technology, NO) "The neurobiology of the monarch butterfly compass"
    • Shaked Ron (Israel Institute of Technology, IL) "Neural respresentation of Head-direction across brain areas in quails"
    • Thomas Euler (University of Tübingen, DE) "Discovering novel feature-selective retinal circuits through model-guided search of natural stimulus space"

  • Lecture series

    1. Introduction to magnetoreception and navigation in vertebrates (Henrik Mouritsen)
    2. Spectroscopy methods to measure magnetic field effects in proteins (Christiane Timmel/Stuart Mackenzie)
    3. Spin dynamics of cryptochrome proteins (Peter Hore)
    4. Optical microscopy techniques in biophysics (Christoph Lienau)
    5. Magnetic-particle-based magnetoreception (Michael Winklhofer)
    6. Purifying cryptochrome proteins (Rabea Bartölke)
    7. Ultrafast optical spectroscopy in biology and chemistry (Antonietta de Sio)
    8. Modelling cryptochrome proteins (Ilia Solov'yov)
    9. The genetics of bird migration (Miriam Liedvogel)
    10. Using virus techniques to study bird behaviour (Constance Scharff/Ezequiel Mendoza)
    11. Cryptochrome molecules and their interaction partners (Karl Koch)
    12. Processing of light and magnetic stimuli in the retina (Karin Dedek)
    13. Electrophysiological methods and magnetic stimulation (Martin Greschner)
    14. Brain pathways for magnetoreception (Dominik Heyers/Onur Güntürkün)
    15. Orientation in fish (Gabriele Gerlach)
    16. Navigation in bats (Nachum Ulanovsky)
    17. Magnetoreception in bats (Oliver Lindecke)
    18. Designing behavioural experiments to study magnetoreception (Henrik Mouritsen)
    19. Studying migration and navigation in free-flying birds (Heiko Schmaljohann)
    20. Unraveling the navigational phenotype - a variance partitioning approach (Sandra Bouwhuis)
    21. Models of animal movement, collective motion and swarming (Bernd Blasius)
    22. Introduction to High-Performance Computing (Stefan Harfst)
    23. The geomagnetic field as a cue for spatial orientation in insects (Pauline Fleischmann)