Christoph Wagner

Experience

• 

  Institute für Physiology, University of Cologne

  Jun 2017 - Jul 2019

  Student Research Assistant

  I worked as a student research assistant in the group of Dr. Mechthild Schroeter, in the Institute of Vegetative Physiology, led by Prof. Dr. Gabriele Pfitzer. There, I was responsible for all genotyping of transgene mice strains of the institute by means of PCR and gel electrophoresis.

• 

  Institute for Medical Statistics and Bioinformatics, University of Cologne

  Aug 2019 - Jan 2020

  Student Research Assistant

  I worked as a student research assistant in the group of Prof. Dr. Achim Tresch, supervised by Dr. Till Baar. The aim of the project was the development of a neural network for the identification of modified RNA molecules in a pool of non-modified molecules using Oxford Nanopore technology. As data, Oxford Nanopore yields a time series of voltage gradients over a membrane, while the molecule is pulled through the Nanopore. In the course of my employment, I have preprocessed through data with various means and extracted key parameters for every time series, for instance through wavelet transformation. Subsequently, I have developed, trained and tested several convolutional neural networks in the Keras Tensorflow environment by Cross Validation. Near the end of my employment, before I resigned to concentrate on my Bachelors thesis, I started also conceiving recurrent neural networks to harvest their power for time series data. Show less

• 

  Institute of Synthetic Biology, Heinrich-Heine-University Düsseldorf

  Aug 2021 - Nov 2021

  Scientific Research Assistant

  Scientific research assistant in the Institute of Synthetic Biology, Düsseldorf under Prof. Dr. Matias Zurbriggen. Together with Dr. Uriel Urquiza, I was occupied with data management and setting up the IT-infrastructure for the institute. The primary goal of the employment was the standardised and digitalised documentation of plasmid sequences generated in the institute and their migration to the JBEI-ICE public repository. Apart from that, I worked on establishing liquid handling robotics in the institute using the Opentrons platform. Show less

• 

  The Johns Hopkins University

  Feb 2022 - Jul 2022

  Independent Researcher

  Due to a growing interest in the field of Neuroengineering, after completion of my Master in Biology, I decided to spend half a year exploring this discipline independently as a visitor in the group of Prof. Nitish Thakor at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA. This involvement was sponsored by a stipend from the Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes. During this time, I contributed to a project investigating the effect of different ways to deliver a movement prompt on brain responses. This involved developing a virtual environment containing a virtual representation of a prosthetic arm. Experimental subjects would observe the moving prosthesis through images, videos or in an immersive 3D VR environment, while having their EEG recorded. Our hypothesis was that the more immersive VR environment would elicit a stronger neural response for a phenomenon called Motor Imagery, that is connected with movement learning. Such an outcome would broaden our understanding for the processing of movements and could yield improved rehabilitation techniques.I learnt a lot about neurorehabilitation, programming and Unity game development during these six months. However, I also noticed once more that my fascination still lies in Biology. It bothers me any time when a question remains unanswered because the system we are working with is simply too complicated to feasibly answer every question. Therefore, I decided that I want to, thereon, dedicate my time to studying the most basic units of life: cells. Show less

• 

  The University of Edinburgh

  Jan 2023 - now

  Student demonstrator

  I work as a student demonstrator in Bachelors and Masters courses at the University of Edinburgh, primarily to gain experience in teaching.

• 

  Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology

  Jan 2024 - Mar 2024

  Research Officer

  I am glad to work with the Smart Microfluidics Group (SMFG) at SIMTech, A*STAR, under Dr. Charles Wang Wei. Here I am working on the development of a novel microfluidics device that will assist in scaled-down hands-off Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS) library preparation automation. My role in the project stretches from the design of the device over conception and testing of the experimental protocol to quality control and streamlining of the process. It's humbling to work alongside people from different disciplines who know so much more than I do about manufacturing and engineering! Show less