People

Lead Researchers

Prof Emma Teeling
Full Professor of Zoology, University College Dublin

Prof. Emma Teeling is an international leader in the cross-cutting fields of mammalian phylogenetics and comparative genomics, with particular expertise in bat biology.

She established the Laboratory of Molecular Evolution and Mammalian Phylogenetics in 2005, is a Founding Director of the genome consortium Bat1K and the Full Professor of Zoology, UCD.

She has pioneered wild bats as new models of extended healthspan uniting field, molecular, cellular and genomic studies to uncover how bats slow down expected ageing and resist disease.

She has been awarded prestigious personal grants for this research-European Research Council (ERC) Starting grant (2013-2018), a Science Foundation Ireland (SFI), President of Ireland Young Researcher Award (2006-2012), an Irish Research Council (IRC) Laureate Award (2018-2022), an SFI Future Frontiers Award (2020-2025), and an ERC Synergy grant (2024-2030) as lead PI.

Google Scholar

Prof Linfa Wang
Signature Research Programme in Emerging Infectious Diseases, Duke-NUS Medical School

Prof Wang is a Professor in the Programme in Emerging Infectious Diseases at Duke-NUS Medical School and the inaugural Executive Director of the Programme for Research in Epidemic Preparedness and Response (PREPARE), Singapore. He is one of the world’s leading experts in zoonotic diseases, bat immunology and pathogen discovery.

Prof Wang holds a PhD degree from the University of California, Davis USA and a Bachelor’s degree from the East China Normal University, Shanghai China.

Prof Wang is a member of multiple World Health Organization committees on COVID-19. He has more than 500 scientific papers including papers in Science, Nature, New England Journal of Medicine, Lancet, along with nine patents and many invited book chapters. He holds a number of honorary positions and memberships and has received numerous awards. Prof Wang was elected to the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering in 2010, the American Academy of Microbiology in 2021 and Australian Academy of Sciences in 2023 in recognition of his achievement in new and emerging diseases. He received the Singapore’s President Science Award in 2021.

Google Scholar

Prof Michael Hiller
Professor of Comparative Genomics, Senckenberg Research Institute & Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany

Michael Hiller is a computational biologist and Professor of Comparative Genomics at the Senckenberg Research Institute and the Goethe University in Frankfurt Germany. His main interest is to understand how nature’s fascinating phenotypic diversity has evolved and how it is encoded in the genome.

His current research focuses on traits in bats, other mammals and vertebrates that may have potential applications in biomedicine. Current work in his lab includes (i) sequencing and assembly of reference-quality genomes of species with interesting traits, (ii) whole genome alignments, (iii) developing computational approaches for gene annotation, orthology inference, and accurate detection of relevant evolutionary changes, and (iv) applying these methods to reveal the genomic basis of phenotypic adaptations.

He received more than €7.8 Million third party funding and co-authored over 100 publications, including influential methods such as the ‘Forward Genomics’ framework or TOGA.

Google Scholar

Prof Björn Schumacher
Chair for Genome Stability in Ageing and Disease

Since 2013, Björn Schumacher is full professor and director of the Institute for Genome Stability in Aging and Diseases (IGSAD) at the CECAD Research Centre of the University of Cologne. He received his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry in Munich and conducted his postdoctoral research as EMBO and Marie Curie fellow at the Erasmus Medical Centre in Rotterdam. Professor Schumacher is President of the German Society for DNA Repair (DGDR), co-Director of the Minerva Center of the Biological Mechanisms of Healthy Aging at Bar-Ilan University (IL), and between 2014 and 2020 served as President of the German Society for Aging Research (DGfA). Since 2023, Schumacher is speaker of the DFG Research Unit FOR 5504 on “Physiological causes and consequences of genome instability”. He was awarded with the Eva Luise Köhler Research Prize, the Innovation Prize of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia, the DFG Reinhart Koselleck and European Research Council (ERC) grants, coordinated the Marie Curie initial training network on chronic DNA damage in aging (CodeAge) and served on several editorial boards. His research interest focuses on the molecular mechanisms through which DNA damage contributes to cancer development and aging-ssociated diseases. Employing the C. elegans system and mammalian disease models, his group uncovered cell-autonomous and systemic responses through which the organism adapts to accumulating DNA damage with aging. Through the understanding of the basic mechanisms of genome instability-driven aging, Schumacher aims to contribute to the development of future strategies to prevent aging-associated diseases.