Past ImmunoLectures

Sylvia Cremer studied biology at the University of Erlangen, and received her PhD (Dr. rer. nat.) in 2002 from the University of Regensburg. After a postdoc at the University of Copenhagen and a Junior Fellowship at the Institute of Advanced Studies (WIKO) in Berlin, she performed her Habilitation at the University of Regensburg in 2010. Since then, she works at the ISTA (Institute of Science and Technology Austria) in Klosterneuburg, first as Assistant Professor, and since 2015 as Full Professor.

Her research was predominantly funded by the ERC, both by a Starting and Consolidator grant. She received multiple awards for her research, including the Walther Arndt Prize of the German Zoological Society DZG (2013) and the Elisabeth Lutz Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences ÖAW (2015). 

www.socialimmunity.ista.ac.at

Research
Sylvia Cremer’s research focuses on the cooperative disease defence of social insect colonies, particularly ants. In addition to the individual immune systems of all colony members, these collective and cooperative actions provide the colony with disease protection, or Social Immunity. The colony-level disease defences of social insects show an amazingly similar organisation to the immune system of individual organisms. This is because insect colonies form super-organisms, where the individual insects – just like cells within a body – specialise on either reproduction (the queen resp. germline) or maintenance (the sterile workers resp. soma). The fitness of each individual is therefore strictly connected to the overall fitness of the colony, promoting unconditional cooperation between colony members. This resulted in the evolution of highly sophisticated colony disease defences, including hygienic suicide by social apoptosis and altruistic ‘find me and eat me’ signalling of infected individuals.

Ralf’s lab focuses on developing and applying genome engineering approaches to better understand T cell biology and help design novel therapeutics. During his postdoc in the Marson lab at UCSF and Gladstone Institutes, he contributed to establishing large-scale CRISPR screening platforms in primary human T cells. Currently, his group at MedUni Vienna aims to further develop genetic tools to study fundamental T cell functions and potentially improve cell therapies. The Schmidt lab is particularly interested in deciphering the genetic code controlling T cell responses and rewiring regulatory circuits to enhance their therapeutic potential in cancer, autoimmunity and beyond.

www.labormedizin.meduniwien.ac.at