October/November 2025:
On October 1st, we officially started our new FunCTion project, where we investigate the mycobiome of potato tubers. Jessie Chen is the PhD student, who will mainly work in Kristina’s lab on the isolation and characterization of tuber endophytes. Tomas Vogels is the cumputational PhD student who will be working in Thomas Hackl’s group to tie all the genomic, transciptomic, and metabolomic data together. Welcome to these two new team members!
July 2025:
Ting attended the “Metabarcoding of Plant Microbiomes II” summer school in Slovakia as a trainer. Kristina enjoyed the FEBS Excellence Awardee meeting and FEBS Congress in Turkey.
June 2025:
Happy times – Kristina was promoted to “Associate Professor for Pharmaceutical Biology” and received the right to promote PhD candidates, the Dutch “ius promovendi”.
We also took a new group photo (credits: Angelina Osipyan)
May 2025:
Nika defended her thesis “cum laude”. What an honor to have been part of this journey. Now, we only need to get those last papers published 🙂
April 2025:
Ting’s and Xiao’s joint research paper on their Cosmosporella sp. isolate is now accepted in Current Research in Microbial Sciences. Excellent job, Ting and Xiao, and many thanks also to our collaborators Rosario del Carmen Flores-Vallejo, Anna-Maria Radu, and Jan Maarten van Dijl!
The NWO awarded a collaborative grant (ENW-M2) to Kristina and her collaborator Dr. Thomas Hackl at the Groningen Institute for Evolutionary Life Sciences, where they will study the potato mycobiome. We will be able to hire two PhD students or 1 postdoc and 1 PhD student.
March 2025:
“Hora Finita!” for the second Haslinger lab graduate: congratulations Dr. Ting He.
December 2024:
New preprints from the lab: Ting and Nika both finished two research articles that will hopefully soon be published in peer-reviewed journals (see our publications page). These mansucripts also complete the chapters for their theses and they will both have their defenses in spring 2025.
November 2024:
First PhD graduation in the Haslinger lab: Dr. Bo Peng successfully defended his thesis on November 19. Well done, Bo – we could not be prouder!
The day before Bo’s defense we also had a mini-symposium with talks given by the two external examiners, Prof. Cathleen Zeymer from TU Munich and Prof. Peter Punt from Leiden University. What an honor!
October 2024:
Kristina received a prestigious grant from the talent scheme of the Dutch Research Council (NWO ENW Vidi). This means that the Haslinger lab will soon hire two new PhD students to develop a biosynthetic platform for aromatic meroterpenoids. Keep your eyes peeled for updates!
September 2024:
Another Haslinger lab publication hot off the press: Riccardo managed to heterologously express two genes from lichen-forming fungi, which are notoriously difficult to work with.
June/July 2024:
Haslinger lab members at conferences: Ting presented her poster on the mbc-prime tool to design new primers for metabarcoding (collaboration with Hackl lab) at the 5th Plant Microbiome Symposium in Amsterdam; and Kristina gave a talk about Nika’s project on exploring the sequence-function landscape of fungal type 3 polyketide synthases at the Directing Biosynthesis Conference in Birmingham. Pre-prints for both projects are in the making!
Mai 2024:
The Haslinger lab received funding from the Gratama foundation to support the exploration of our fungal strain collection for novel antimicrobials. We are very greatful to the Gratama Family for this generous award and their support for mitigating the antibiotic crisis.
March 2024:
Time to say goodbye… Ricccardo is leaving our team to start a new research project at VTT Finland funded by the NovoNordisk Foundation. What a great opportunity! We wish him all the best and are looking forward to continued collaborations.
January 2024:
Ercan started his PhD project on the engineering of a (potential) therapeutic protein. He is jointly supervised with Prof. Reinoud Gosens in the Molecular Pharmacology department of our institute.
December 2023:
Three manuscripts accepted for publication in the same week! Congratulations to the first authors – Bo, Bo&Lin, and Riccardo. And a big THANK YOU you to our collaborators and their teams: Matthew Groves, Wim Quax, Arnold Driessen, and Jessica Allen.
November 2023:
Ziwei started her PhD project with us. Welcome to the team!
October 2023:
Riccardo gave an interview on his work on the anti-ageing/neuroprotective compounds in the lion’s mane fungus. It was published this week in the University news!
September 2023:
Riccardo and Kristina repeated their successful Fun with Fungi event at the Forum Groningen again. This time in collaboration with Riane Prins from the Billerbeck lab and Mirthe Hoekzema from the LoopOfFun consortium (Arnold Driessen’s lab). More than 100 families visited our booth, built clay mushrooms, and looked through the microscope. Check out the fotos under the Zpannend Zernike tab.
Bo and Kristina travelled to Oegstgeest for the annual Netherlands Biotechnology Congress. Kristina gave a talk about our recent pre-print on engineering Penicillium rubens for flavonoid production and Bo presented a poster on his engineering of chalcone synthases.
Nika, Bo, and Kristina published a minireview on pathway design in FEBS Letters as part of the FEBS Excellence Award special issue. Check it out here.
July 2023:
Ting and Xiao published their first research paper from their PhD projects! We studied the genome and metabolome of the endophytic fungus Fusarium sp. VM40 isolated from Vinca minor. This was one of the first genomes that we sequenced with our own ONT MinION! Thank you, FEBS, for the finacial support!
June 2023:
Recently, Kristina participated in the recording of a podcast episode on the discovery of antifungals. It was a great experience to discuss this important topic with the other podcast guest, Dr. Sonja Billerbeck, and the hosts, Morjolein Crooijmans and Darshak Bhat. You can listen to the episode here and also checkout the other episodes of this SynbioNL initiative!
Nika won the talk price within her parallel session at the annual Pharmacy Day at the University of Groningen. Congratulations, Nika!
Ting, Nika, Riccardo, and Kristina travelled to Cork, Ireland, for the PYFF8 conference. What a fun and inspiring conference! Riccardo gave an excellent talk and Nika won the poster price. #ProudPI
May 2023:
Kristina received one of the “XS” grants from NWO to develop new antifungal drugs to tackle dangerous fungal infections. We are looking for MSc students to support this project in the upcoming academic year.
Haslinger Lab outing with dinner at the greek restaurant “De Olijfboom”, and bowling. Who would have known that we have such talented players in the lab!
March 2023:
Nika published her first primary research article in ChemBioChem. Congratulations, Nika!
November 2022:
Riccardo won one of the “XS” grants from the Dutch funding agency for his research idea to boost the production of anti-Alzheimer’s natural products by genome engineering of fungi. Well done, Riccardo! #ProudPI
Nika and Kristina participated in a community effort to annotate biosynthetic gene clusters for the MIBiG database last year. The results were just published in NAR! https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkac1049
October 2022:
We just posted Bo’s first research manuscript on BioRxiv. Great collaboration with the groups of Matthew Groves and Wim Quax! DOI: 10.1101/2022.10.02.510496
The Science Festival @ Forum Groningen was a great success. More than 100 families came to our booth to learn about the use of fungi in food, pharma and biotech and to make fun clay mushrooms. You can see the pictures of the pieces of art in the “Zpannend Zernike” tab of this website. Thank you, Riccardo and Niels for being such great tour guides through the world of fungi.
September 2022:
The Haslinger lab will participate in the Science Festival @ Forum Groningen with an activity for children – Fun with Fungi!
Here is the link to the event program (in Dutch)
July 2022:
A new PhD student, Xiao Li, is joining our group. We are excited to have her!
June 2022:
First proper lab outing: we saved the world from a devastating plant virus at the Groningen EscapeHunt and enjoyed delicious Indonesian food afterwards. Unfortunately, Bo couldn’t join us but we will have another outing soon. Thanks for organizing, Riccardo!
May 2022:
Nika gave a talk about the early results of her PhD project at the Natural Products (Meta) Genome Mining conference at The Novo Nordisk Foundation #ProudPI
A small step for mankind, a huge step for the Haslinger lab: our first sequencing run with Oxford Nanopore! Good luck, Ting&Riccardo
April 2022:
First conference travel since the start of the pandemic. Kristina attended the KNVM Spring meeting in Arnhem (NL) and gave a short talk in the synthetic biology session, the Westerdijk Spring Symposium in Amsterdam (NL) with a short talk in the natural products session, and the NextGenBiocat in Delft (NL) as one of the invited speakers.
February 2022:
Lots of fun stuff going on in the Haslinger lab in this new year:
- Kristina came back from maternity leave and received good news about her application for the FEBS Excellence Award! The funds will be spent over the next three years on our fungal research, especially Ting’s project on the microbiome of medicinal plants.
- Two BSc students started their research projects under Ting’s supervision. Welcome, Marit and Khiara!
- Two MSc students are starting their projects this term under Riccardo’s supervision. Welcome Fons and Iris!
- Sadaf and Pim just had their mid-term evaluation for their MSc projects and they are both doing great. Fingers crossed for the upcoming experiments!
November 2021:
Time flies. It’s already been a year since Nika, Bo and Ting arrived in the Netherlands and started their projects! We are excited to see what the next year(s) will bring!
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Two Masters students have joined the lab for their thesis projects. Welcome Sadaf and Pim!
June 2021:
For the upcoming academic year, we are looking for talented MSc students eager to learn about pathway engineering in E. coli or the development of genetic tools in fungi. Please email us if you are interested!
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Our new lab space for working with fungi is almost ready. We are just waiting for the gas lines to be connected and then we are good to go!
March 2020:
We are happy to welcome our new postdoc, Riccardo, to the team. He just defended his PhD thesis in the last week of February and dove right into his new research topic in the Haslinger lab. Welcome aboard!
Congratulations, Rosa, on the publication of your review on Genetics and Genomics of Endophytic Fungi for Bioprospecting Efforts. Awesome to see hard work paying off! https://doi.org/10.3389/fbioe.2021.649906
October 2020:
Early Christmas at the department: new shakers for the Schmidt and Haslinger labs and the entire department.
August 2020:
Nika Sokolova accepted a PhD position in the Haslinger lab. Originally from Odesa, Ukraine, Nika graduated this year from Maastricht University cum laude. We are excited to welcome her to the lab in November 2020!
July 2020:
Mrs. Ting He from Beijing University of Chinese Medicine and Mr. Bo Peng from Hubei University received scholarships from the Chinese Scholarship Council to enroll in the Graduate School of Science and Engineering at the University of Groningen and join the Haslinger lab as PhD students in the fall of 2020. Congratulations Ting and Bo! We are excited to welcome you to the team!
June 2020:
First B.Sc students successfully complete their B.Sc thesis in the Haslinger lab. Congratulations Sadaf Deravi and Kahramen Gercek! It’s been a pleasure e-working with you during the Coronavirus lockdown.
Haslinger Lab 