Principal Investigator Lara Urban
One Health
The concept of One Health describes that all health on our planet, including the health of nature, animals, plants, microbes, and other organisms, is inextricably linked. Across the world, natural systems have been degraded to an extent unprecedented in human history, resulting in environmental, social, and economic costs such as exacerbated water and food insecurity, fragile ecosystems, and pandemic risk at an enormous scale. Lara Urban’s research group at Helmholtz AI and the Helmholtz Pioneer Campus focuses on the application of Molecular Biology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the context of One Health. The team specifically studies how genomics, portable technology, statistics, and machine learning can benefit environmental health and nature conservation in the context of One Health. Research topics include, but are not limited to:
leveraging genomics and AI to study the diversity and distribution of environmental microbiomes such as bioaerosols and their impact on human health, also in the context of climate change; pioneering portable genomic and data analysis approaches for in situ real-time detection and classification of pathogens; monitoring genomic diversity in the context of animal health and biodiversity conservation as well as global health.
See Lara´s Talk at "London Calling 2023"
Dr. Lara Urban
Lara's research interest lies in the integration of genomic, statistical and computational approaches to drive the development of an accurate and efficient data-driven approach for the conservation of planetary health in general and of biodiversity in particular. She obtained her PhD from EMBL-EBI and the University of Cambridge, United Kingdom, in 2019, where she worked on statistical and quantitative approaches in cancer and single-cell genetics. As an independent Research Fellow in New Zealand funded by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Lara then combined this expertise with her background in ecology, and applied genomics and machine learning in the context of nature conservation. She further strongly believes in the Helmholtz Association's goals to promote the democratisation of science for a data-driven future, and to transform new scientific findings into actual societal benefits. She therefore actively pursues extra-scientific engagements, for example through her roles in the eLife Early-Career Advisory Group, European Reference Genome Atlas council, IUCN Conservation Genetics Specialist Group or Accessible Genomics initiative.
Lara has just been named the Young Scientist of the Year 2022 by the German Association of University Professors and Lecturers.
Factsheet
Dr. Lara Urban
Positions and Career
from 2022: Principal Investigator at Helmholtz Munich, Helmholtz AI and Helmholtz Pioneer Campus, and Fellow at Life Sciences School, Technical University of Munich
2020 – 2022: Independent Humboldt Research Fellow at the Departments of Mathematics & Statistics and Anatomy, University of Otago, New Zealand
Education
2015 – 2019 International EMBL PhD Fellow at EMBL-EBI and University of Cambridge, United Kingdom
2013 – 2015 Master of Science in Biology at Julius-Maximilians-University of Würzburg (A+ with Distinction)
2010 – 2013 Bachelor of Science in Biology at Julius-Maximilians-University of Würzburg (A+ with Distinction)
Honors and Awards
Finalist in the Cambridge Independent Science and Technology Awards (2022)
Recipient of Feodor Lynen Research Fellowship by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2019)
Invitation to the 68th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting (2018)
Recipient of International EMBL PhD Fellowship (2015)
Awards for Distinction in Bachelor and Master, and Award for Outstanding Master's thesis (2013 & 215)
Recipient of Friedrich-Ebert-Foundation Scholarships for Bachelor and Master studies (2010 & 2013)
Professional Memberships
since 2021: Member of the international eLife Early-Career Advisory Group
since 2021: Member of the IUCN Conservation Genetics Specialist Group
since 2020: Council member of the European Reference Genome Atlas consortium
since 2017: Co-founder and -organiser of the PuntSeq initiative
Postdoc
Dr. Amit Fenn
Ph.D.: Technical Universität München
Ph.D. Thesis: Towards Increasing Reproducibility in Alternative Splicing Analysis
Research Interest: Machine Learning, Biodiversity Analysis and Transcriptomics
Hobbies: IOT, Motorbiking, Karate and Karaoke
Albert Perlas
PhD: Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
PhD Focus: Avian influenza interactions with the host and the environment
Research interest: Real-time and portable genomics for viral surveillance in the field
Hobbies: Hiking, wildlife, sailing, politics
PhD Students
Tim Reska
MSc.: Biochemistry at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München
MSc. Thesis: Combining Second and Third Generation RNA-Sequencing Techniques
Research Interest: Genome and transcriptome assembly
Hobbies: Fitness, Reading, Cooking and Movies
Harika Ürel
MSc.: Molecular Bioengineering at Technische Universität Dresden
MSc. Thesis: Quantitative Analysis of Liquid-Liquid Phase Separation Related Proteins and Protein Databases
Research Interest: Genomic surveillance of airborne pathogens
Hobbies: Yoga, Reading, Movies, and Cooking
MSc Students
Linus Hölzel
BSc.: Hochschule Weihenstephan-Triesdorf
BSc. Thesis: “Interspecies analysis of CHERP (Scaf6)"
Research Interest: Causality, systems biology
Hobbies: Volleyball, Chess, Card and Board Games
Daniel Gygax
BSc.: Biology at Universidad del Valle de Guatemala
BSc. Thesis: Skin microbiome changes in tropical frogs and salamanders in captivity
Research Interest: Evolutionary genomics, conservation genetics, eDNA monitoring
Hobbies: Fitness, Reading, Videogames, Nature exploration, (Degustation of Bavarian Beer)
Visitors
Ferdinand Hölzl (shared with the Rieck lab)
BSc.: Physics at Universität Regensburg
BSc. Thesis: “Fabrication and characterization of patterned constrictions in few-layer NbSe2 crystals"
Research Interest: Modelling air pollution through machine learning
Hobbies: Hiking, Music, Reading, Cooking
Eddie Martin
Msc: Artificial Intelligence in the School of Informatics at the University of Edinburgh
Master Thesis: Sonification of Biological Sequence Data
Focus: bioinformatics and sonification
Selected Publications
Robust Haplotype-resolved assembly of diploid genomes without parental data
Haoyu Cheng, Erich D. Jarvis, Olivier Fedrigo, Klaus-Peter Koepfli, Lara Urban, Neil J. Gemmell, Heng Li
More DetailsFreshwater monitoring by nanopore sequencing
Lara Urban, Andre Holzer, J Jotautas Baronas, Michael B Hall, Philipp Braeuninger-Weimer, Michael J Scherm, Daniel J Kunz,
Surangi N Perera, Daniel E Martin-Herranz
More Details16S long-read nanopore sequencing is feasible and reliable for endometrial microbiome analysis.
Oberle, A.* & Urban, L.*, Falch, S., Nagai, Y., Ulm, P. A., Hengstschläger, M., Feichtinger, M
More DetailsGenomic basis for RNA alterations revealed by whole-genome analyses of 27 cancer types.
PCAWG Transcriptome Core Group (incl. Urban, L.*), (...), Zhang, Z.
More DetailsTwo deeply divergent co-existing mitochondrial genomes in the Tuatara
16S long-read nanopore sequencing is feasible and reliable for endometrial microbiome analysis.
More DetailsMight gene duplication and neofunctionalization contribute to the sexual lability observed in fish?
Edgecombe, J., Urban, L., Todd, E. V., Gemmell, N. J.
More DetailsRetrospective evaluation of whole exome and genome mutation calls in 746 cancer samples
Bailey, M. H., (…), Urban, L., (…), PCAWG Consortium
More DetailsSex differences in oncogenic mutational processes
Li, C. H., (…), Urban, L., (…), PCAWG Consortium
More DetailscovRNA: discovering covariate associations in large-scale gene expression data
Lara Urban , Christian W Remmele, Marcus Dittrich, Roland F Schwarz, Tobias Müller
More DetailsCombined single-cell profiling of expression and DNA methylation reveals splicing regulation and heterogeneity
Stephanie M. Linker, Lara Urban, Stephen J. Clark, Mariya Chhatriwala, Shradha Amatya, Davis J. McCarthy, Ingo Ebersberger,
Ludovic Vallier, Wolf Reik, Oliver Stegle, Marc Jan Bonder
More DetailsContact us
Helmholtz Pioneer Campus
Helmholtz Zentrum München
Deutsches Forschungszentrum für Gesundheit und Umwelt (GmbH)
Ingolstädter Landstr. 1
85764 Neuherberg
Germany