Postdocs
Catalina Biglione
Research Topic:
Responsive Nanogels for the site-specific Release of Antimicrobial Agents triggered by Enzymes
About Catalina:
Catalina got her BSc (Hons.) in Chemistry in 2012 at the National University of Córdoba (UNC) in Argentina. She carried out her PhD in Chemistry at UNC under the supervision of Prof. M. C. Strumia (2017). She worked on the synthesis and characterization of different magnetic thermoresponsive nanogels for nanomedicine. In 2017, she joined Calderón’s group at Free University Berlin as an Einstein postdoctoral fellow for developing hybrid nanomaterials as theranostic agents. Her research was focus on the synthesis of magnetoplasmonic nanodevices. In 2019, she joined Klinger Lab as a postdoctoral researcher developingnanogels for fighting resistant bacteria.
Contact:
catalina.biglione@fu-berlin.de
Lucila Navarro
Research Topic:
Functionalization of Block Copolymer Structured Nanoparticles
About Lucila:
Lucila received a B.S., Hons in Biotechnology in 2008 from Universidad Nacional del Litoral (UNL- Santa Fe, Argentina) under the supervision of D. Prof. Jorge Lassaga. In 2012 she started her PhD under the supervision of Prof. Ignacio Rintoul in material science for biomedical applications at INTEC-UNL. During her PhD she focused on the synthesis of new materials (thermoplastics and elastomers) to be used as coatings in coronary stents for drug release application. Immediately after she finished her PhD in 2017, she got a postdoc position in the group of Prof. Santiago Vaillard at INTEC-UNL where she focused on the synthesis of elastomers as drug release systems for soft tissue application. In 2019, she joined Klinger Lab granted with a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual fellowship.
Contact:
lucila.navarro@fu-berlin.de
PhD Students
Thi Mai Phuong Neumann-Tran
Research Topic:
Responsive Polymers for the site-specific Release of Antimicrobial Agents triggered by Enzymes
About Phuong:
Phuong obtained her Bachelors degree in chemistry in 2016 at the Freie Universität Berlin. After her research internship in the group of Prof. Rainer Haag dealing with the functionalization of hyper branched polyglycerol with active compounds to obtain polymer-drug conjugates, Phuong began her master studies at the Klinger Lab in October 2018. After successfully completing her master thesis, Phuong began her PhD in the Klinger lab in 2019. In her PhD research project she focusses on enzyme responsive polymers to tackle antibiotic resistance.
Contact:
p.tran@fu-berlin.de
Doğuş Işık
Research Topic:
Sulfoxides as functional groups in polymer materials
About Doğuş:
Doğuş received a B.S. in chemistry in 2013 from the Freie Universität Berlin. He completed his M.Sc. in 2016 under the supervision of Prof. Marcelo Calderón where he studied the formation of hybrid supramolecular nanogels using cyclodextrin-decorated gold nanoparticles and adamantene-functionalized dendritic polyglycerol as vehicles for drug delivery purposes. Doğuş then began his doctoral studies in the summer of the same year in the Klinger Lab.
Contact:
d.isik@fu-berlin.de
Alexandra Gruber
Research Topic:
Amphiphilic nanogels as versatile drug delivery vehicles
About Alexandra:
Alexandra graduated from the Philipps University in Marburg in spring 2014 and earned a B.Sc. in Chemistry. During summer 2014 she completed a research internship in the group of Professor Craig Hawker at the University of California in Santa Barbara with focus on coacervate micro- and nanogels. She then started her master studies at the Freie Universität Berlin. In April 2016 Alexandra joined the Klinger group for writing her master thesis. Currently, she is pursuing her PhD working on amphiphilic nanogels for delivery applications.
Contact:
alexandra.gruber@fu-berlin.de
Ante Markovina
Research Topic:
Amphiphilic nanogels based on aliphatic polycarbonates
About Ante:
Ante received a BSc (Hons.) in chemistry in 2013 from Faculty of chemistry and Technology, University of Split in Croatia. In 2015 he obtained his MSc (Hons.) in Medicinal and Pharmaceutical chemistry from Department of Biotechnology, University of Rijeka in Croatia where he focused on the development of compounds for novel sensors in biomedical applications. Afterwards, Ante joined the Department for Analytical chemistry at University of Split, Croatia as Research and Teaching assistant. During his career he also worked as Research scientist at Recipharm AB, Uppsala in Sweden developing new antibiotics. In 2019 he moved to the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz joining the group of Prof. Matthias Barz to work on the development of polypet(o)ides for pretargeted imaging by in vivo click chemistry with a Marie Curie Fellowship. In 2020 Ante joined the Klinger Lab and began his doctoral studies with the support of the DFG.
Contact:
ante.markovina@fu-berlin.de
Ruiguang Cui
Research Topic:
Switchable Pickering emulsions for promotion of heterogeneous reactions
About Ruiguang:
Ruiguang obtained a B. S. in Materials Chemistry from Zhengzhou University (China) in 2014, and then a M. S. in Polymer Chemistry and Physics from Zhejiang University (China) in 2017, focusing on preparation and drug release behaviors of degradable microgels with various inner structures. For the following academic experience, Ruiguang has worked in Suzhou Institute of Nano-Tech and Nano-Bionics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (SINANO, CAS) since 2018, where he studied the surface properties of the solid-state interphase (SEI) of lithium anodes through atomic force microscopy (AFM), and also the solid polyelectrolyte. In the Klinger lab, Ruiguang is working on Pickering emulsions from December 2020. Through the design of nanoparticles at oil/water interfaces, he intends to accelerate the rate of heterogeneous reactions.
Contact:
ruiguang.cui@fu-berlin.de
Sidra Kanwal
Research Topic:
New Amphiphilic Polymers for Antimicrobial Use
About Sidra:
Sidra completed her B.Sc. (Hons.) in Chemistry from Government College University (GCU) Lahore, Pakistan in 2016. She then started her MS in chemistry at Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS), Pakistan. When it comes to MS thesis, she has been involved in working on the development of stimuli responsive polymer-drug conjugates as nanocarriers for the delivery of cancer therapeutics under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Basit Yameen. After graduating from LUMS in 2018, she joined Prof. Yameen’s research group as research assistant in the same year. During that period, she developed safe and reduction responsive drug delivery nanocarriers based on Dextran-PTXL conjugates with the provision of spatiotemporal control over payload release for cancer treatment. In 2020, she was awarded with DAAD scholarship for PhD in Germany, where she joined Prof. Klinger’s lab. Currently, she is working on the development of antimicrobial polymers.
Contact:
sidra.kanwal@fu-berlin.de
Former Group Members
Tengiz Kantaria
Research Topic:
New biodegradable antimicrobial polymers based on cationic triazolium groups in the backbone
About Tengiz:
Tengiz received a B.S. in biology in 2011 from the Abkhazian State University (Sukhumi, Abkhazia, Georgia). In 2013 he started his master studies at the Georgian Technical University (Tbilisi, Georgia) where he studied the preparation and characterization of nanoparticles on the basis of α-amino acid based biodegradable poly(ester amide)s. After receiving his M.Sc. in chemical and biological engineering in 2015, he started his doctoral studies under the supervision of Prof. Ramaz Katsarava and gained his PhD in chemistry in 2018 from the Agricultural University of Georgia & Free University of Tbilisi (Tbilisi, Georgia). During his PhD he focused on the synthesis of new biodegradable polymers using “click chemistry”. In 2019, he was granted the Joint Rustaveli-DAAD-fellowship and joined the Klinger Lab as a postdoctoral researcher.
Contact: tengiz.kantaria@fu-berlin.de
Franziska Hähle
Research Topic:
Development of Polymers Containing Well-Defined Glycosaminoglycan Oligomers as Anti-Inflammatory Polymers
About Franziska:
Franziska studied Pharmacy at the Freie Universität Berlin and graduated there in March 2017. During her practical year, she decided to participate to the Master’s program “Pharmaceutical Research” at the FU Berlin, in which she enrolled in October 2017. She joined the Klinger group in December 2017 for a research internship with focus on assessing the feasibility of PGPR-90 as surfactant in inverse miniemulsion polymerizations. In March 2018, Franziska started to pursue her Master thesis project, investigating the cytokine binding affinity of polymers bearing sulfated side groups.
Contact:
franziska.haehle@fu-berlin.de
Research Interns
We are always interested in motivated students to join the team.