2020—2021

Katrin Hammerschmidt

Microbiology, Kiel University

Katrin Hammerschmidt has been heading the research group Evolutionary Transitions at the Institute of Microbiology at the Christian Albrechts University in Kiel since 2015. Before, she held positions as postdoctoral fellow at the New Zealand Institute for Advanced Study in Auckland, at the University of Sheffield, and at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology in Plön.

Katrin Hammerschmidt’s research focuses on the hierarchical structure of life and how it originated. Exemplary, she currently investigates the evolutionary transition to multicellularity. To this end, she combines the approaches of experimental evolution with phylogenomic reconstructions and theoretical modelling. Starting with populations of unicellular cyanobacteria, she examines at the CAU Kiel, for example, whether division of labour between single cells can act as driver for the evolution of multicellularity.

As a HIAS Research Fellow, Katrin Hammerschmidt will advance this basic research on a conceptual level. Her tandem partner is Heimo Ehmke from the Center for Experimental Medicine who is the Director of the Institute of Cellular and Integrative Physiology at the Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE).
Katrin Hammerschmidt’s HIAS Fellowship is funded by the Joachim Herz Foundation.

Website

Katrin Hammerschmidt

Funding

Joachim Herz Stiftung

Tandem

Prof. Dr. med. Heimo Ehmke, Center for Experimental Medicine, director of the Institute of Cellular and Integrative Physiology at the Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE)

Bildinformation

Filaments of an originally unicellular cyanobacteria species, Photo: Katrin Hammerschmidt