Group members

Current group members

Antton Alberdi

Group Leader, Associate Professor

I lead a young research group of enthusiastic biologists and data scientists interested in understanding how animal-microbiota interactions shape ecological and evolutionary processes.

Ostaizka Aizpurua

Assistant Professor

My research is focused on understanding how animal-microbiota-environment interactions affect animal behaviour and its implication for animal ecology and evolution.

Ella Lattenkamp

Project and Outreach Manager

As the project and outreach manager for the 3D’omics project I am facilitating communication between the partners, help to keep the project on track, and convey our results to the public.

Carlotta Pietroni

Laboratory Manager

I am involved in optimising the lab procedures for the 3D’omics project, which aims to generate a 3D reconstruction of the animal-intestinal microbiota interactions.

Isolde Van-riemsdijk

Postdoc

I am an evolutionary biologist who explores the boundaries of species. With the hologenomics approach I will uncover the evolutionary interactions between two toad species, their microbiomes, and the notorious chytrid fungus.

Raphael Eisenhofer

Postdoc

I am fascinated by the co-evolution of microbes with their hosts. My research seeks to understand what these intimate relationships mean for animal health and evolution, with a particular focus on wild mammals.

Iñaki Odriozola

Data Analyst

I am an ecologist with knowledge on statistical modelling and data analysis. Currently, my research mainly focuses on studying microbial species distributions and diversity, as well as host-microbe and microbe-microbe interactions.

Jorge Langa

Postdoc

My research focuses on how the hologenomic approach can be applied in the conservation of endangered animal species by pre-conditioning the microbiome of captive-bred individuals prior to their release into the wild.

Michael Miskelly

Postdoc

I am a molecular biologist who has previously focused on the role of the intestine in relation to Type 2 Diabetes. My current research focuses on generating intestinal organoid models from a range of host animals as well as optimizing gut-on-a-chip technology.

Claudia Romeo

Postdoc

I am an ecologist interested in the potential role played by metagenomic plasticity in biological invasions. My research focusses on studying gut microbial diversity in a native-invasive vertebrate system, and how it relates with dietary flexibility, resistance to parasites and animal personality.

Amalia Bogri

Postdoc

Amalia is working in developing and implementing micro-scale metagenomics in the EU project 3D'omics.

Adam Marques

PhD Student

Based at the University of Porto, the research of my Ph.D. focuses on the impacts that anthropogenic habitats have on the diet, microbiome, and genome of fire salamanders in the north-western Iberian Peninsula.

Joana Fernandes

PhD Student

My PhD focuses around the ecological role of dry-stone walls on the preservation of biodiversity and ecosystem services. I’m particularly interested in characterizing trophic interactions through metabarcoding.

Nia Toshkova

PhD Student

I am studying how climate change is affecting bat hibernation and what changes in the transcriptome and metabolome are happening due to the prolonged winter inactivity.

Garazi Martin Bideguren

PhD Student

My PhD focuses on exploring the gut microbiome of lizards and the interactions between these bacteria and their host. Thus, aiming to understand the role of gut microbes in lizard adaptation to different environments.

Nanna Gaun

Research Assitant

As a molecular biologist I perform DNA extractions and library building for the Earth Hologenome Initiative and I generate data used in projects investigating the interaction between vertebrates and their gut microbiome.

Jonas Lauritsen

Research Assistant

With a love for learning, DIY-projects, and microbiology, I assume the role as research assistant, where I help implement and optimise the AlberdiLab laboratory protocols for automation purposes.

Former members

  • Kees Bleven (Research Assistant, 2021-2024) - Kees set up a gut-on-a-chip model to study animal-microbiota interactions of different species during healthy and diseased steady states.
  • Sofia Marcos (PhD Student, 2020-2024) - Sofia applied a hologenomic approach in animal production to understand how pre- and probiotics affect host and gut microbiota interactions towards improving animal welfare.
  • David Nørgaard Essenbæk (MSc Student, 2024) - David's project was focused on understanding the evolutionary features of genome-reduced bacteria associated with vertebrates.
  • Luisa Nielsen (PhD Student, 2020-2024) - The focus of Luisa's PhD research was on behavioural hologenomics. She investigated how the gut microbes associated to a certain host affect its brain – hence, behaviour – using a hologenomic approach.
  • Johan Staffeldt (Student Assistant, 2024) - Johan was putting together an animal trait database to be used on evolutionary host-microbiota analyses.
  • Aoife Leonard (Postdoc, 2020-2024) - Aoife's research focussed on addressing eco-evolutionary questions about the interaction between ecological niches and gut microbiomes of vertebrates as part of the Earth Hologenome Initiative.
  • Amalia Toffano (Data Manager, 2022-2023)  - Amalia worked as data manager on the 3D'omics project, implementing the data repository and contributing to the set up of analysing pipelines.
  • Marta Contreras (Research Assistant, 2022-2023) - Marta worked on the 3D'omics project, implementing molecular techniques to unveil the three-dimensional conformation of animal-microbiota multi-omic interactions.
  • Ana Verissimo (Project Manager, 2021-2023) - Ana worked as project and outreach manager for the 3D’omics project before she took on the role as VOLT centre administrator.
  • Amanda Bolt Botnen (PhD Student, 2019-2022) - Mandy's PhD project revolved around the gut microbiome of domestic and feral cats.
  • Adam Koziol (PhD Student, 2019-2022) - Adam's PhD focused around the role of gut microbiomes in species adaptation. Particularly, looking at metagenomic and taxonomic profiles of these communities and how they form/shape adaptive process to novel environmental conditions.
  • Lasse Nyholm Jessen (PhD Student, 2019-2022) - Lasse's research focused on how the hologenomic approach can be applied in the conservation of endangered animal species by pre-conditioning the microbiome of captive-bred individuals prior to their release into the wild.
  • Rupinder Kaur (Student Assistant, 2020)
  • Louisa Pless (Research Assistant, 2020-2022) - Louisa worked as a laboratory technician on the Holofood and EHI projects.
  • Martina Cardinali (MSc student, Student Assistant, 2020-2021) - Martina contributed to the automatisation of laboratory procedures and took part in the development of the Earth Hologenome Initiative.
  • Núria Hermosilla (MSc student, Student Assistant, 2020-2021) - While being a Bioinformatics student at KU, Nuria worked on the implementation of Holoflow - our in-house pipeline for hologenomics data generation and analysis.
  • Jorsua Herrera (Student Assistant, 2020)

Visitors

  • Claudia Tranquillo (2024 -Insubria University, Italy). Claudia's project was on understanding the effect of microbiomes in the adaptation to anthropic environments in squirrels.
  • Elsa Brenner (2024 - University Centre of the Westfjords, Island). Elsa's Master project focused on understanding the effects of management in the microbiome of Greenland sled dogs.
  • Mireya Arratibel (2024 - Internship). Mireya was working on the development of organoids from diverse animal tissues
  • Jenny Merkesvik (2024 - Norwegian University of Life Science). Jenny developed pipelines for omics analyses of samples deriving from swine and their gut microbiome.
  •  Wanxin Lai (2024 - Norwegian University of Life Science). Wanxin visited us to perform metagenomics analysis from cow microbiome samples.
  • Jasper Ubirajara Chao (2023 - Pennsylvania State University, USA). Jasper's project was focused on understanding the contribution of intestinal microbiomes to the capacity of vultures to feed on rotten carcasses.
  • Eray Sahin (2022 - Acibadem University, Turkey). Eray worked on transcriptomics analyses of broiler chickens within the context of the H2020 project HoloFood.
  • Muzahir Hussain (2022 - IRTA, Catalonia). Muzahir worked on chicken transcriptomics and 16S amplicon sequencing of caecal microbiomes.
  • Nerea Pagaldai (2021 - Aranzadi, the Basque Country). Nerea visited us to perform metagenomic analysis of tawny owl faecal samples and cloacal swabs.
  • Álvaro Moreno (2020 - Complutense University, Spain). Álvaro visited us to generate DNA metabarcoding data from mycorrhizal samples from Greenland.
  • Evie Morris (2020 - University of Exeter, UK). Evie visited us twice to generate metabarcoding and shotgun metagenomic data from bat faeces.
  • Matteo Soverini (2019 - University of Bologna, Italy). Matteo visited us to work on the bioinformatic analysis of ancient coprolites of bronce age dogs.

Address

GLOBE Institute
University of Copenhagen
Øster Farimagsgade 5,
Building 7
1353 Copenhagen, Denmark

Contact

Assoc. Prof. Antton Alberdi
Email: antton.alberdi@sund.ku.dk