HEAD OF GROUP

Christoph Merten grew up in Giessen, Germany, were he received his Abitur in 1995. The same year he began his studies in biochemistry at the University of Frankfurt, Germany. In 1999 he prepared his diploma thesis on retroviral protein display at the Paul-Ehrlich-Institut in Langen, Germany (under supervision of Christian Buchholz). From 2000 to 2004 he prepared his PhD thesis focussing on directed evolution of retroviral envelope proteins at the same institute. Subsequently he joined Andrew Griffiths group at the Medical Research Council, Laboratory for Molecular Biology, in Cambridge, UK, working on novel in vitro compartmentalization techniques. In autumn 2005 the group moved to France and continued their work at the Institute de Science et d'Ingenierie, Strasbourg. In 2007, Christoph became a junior group leader focussing on novel high-throughput assays for drug discovery. Christoph's work resulted in important publications, five patents (four on which he is the sole inventor) and several awards such as the "PhD Fellowship of the Fonds der Chemischen Industrie" (2001), the "Leopoldina Postdoc Fellowship" (2005) and the "Liebig Grant for Prospective University Professors" (2007).