Group Members

Joachim Weischenfeldt

Professor, group leader, started Oct 2015

• Profile: Joachim did his PhD at BRIC with Prof Porse followed by postdoctoral fellowship in the lab of Jan Korbel at EMBL, Heidelberg.

  The interest of the lab spans different aspects of cancer genomics. A focus area is larger structural variants in cancer, their emergence and functional consequences on chromatin organisation and how the evolve during tumour evolution

• About/Fun fact: Joachim is an avid coffee drinker, sometimes alternating with cola, and has an impressive stash of empty coke cans. So you may enjoy refreshment during Liverpool or Danish national team football games in his cinema size screen at his office. When on retreat, watch out and be prepared for his round of science karaoke.

Francesco Favero

Assistant professor, started in 2016

• Profile: Francesco did his PhD in Zoltan Szallasi group at DTU in Kongens Lyngby. After a brief adventure in the Biotech industry he started in the Weischenfeldt group in 2016. Francesco's expertise is analysis of somatic copy numbers and intratumour heterogeneity, and his research focus is on complex structural variants and the multiple aspects of cancer driver discovery
• About/Fun fact: Francesco enjoys to automise processes and make pipelines. He has three children, two based on DNA and one based mostly on C++, R and python (pype, his pipeline). He is painstakingly thorough and cares for little details as much as his 1000 animals, sometimes the wrong details.

Francisco Germán Rodriguez Gonzalez

Staff scientist, started 2016

• Profile: Germán has a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from Gran Canaria, Spain. Afterward, he was a post-doctoral researcher at the Medical Oncology Department at Erasmus MC in Rotterdam under the supervision of John Foekens and John Martens. He is a staff scientist in the Weischenfeldt group, with expertises in different sequencing-based methods and he mentors students in the lab.
• About/Fun fact: Hungry news reader, Germán is constantly updated on what happens around the world and is open to discussing almost everything. He loves music. When he's alone in the lab doing almost a day long experiments, he turns the volume up to the maximum, and you can listen to all kinds of musical styles, from latin rhythms to heavy metal. Proud of his Canary heritage, he always brings Ambrosías Tirma, exquisite wafers, for his colleagues and he never has lunch before 13 pm.

Jakob Schmidt Jespersen

Staft scientist, started 2019

• Profile: Jakob has a MSc degree in Molecular Biomedicine from University of Copenhagen and obtained his PhD degree in 2017 from Centre for Medical Parasitology (UCPH) studying malaria parasite virulence gene variation, expression, and association with disease severity, supervised by prof. Thor G Theander and Thomas Lavstsen. He joined the Program for Translational Hematology (BRIC – UCPH) in 2017 as a lab-based staff scientist responsible for implementing and running assays for genomic characterization (e.g. WGS, panel seq, RNA-seq, ATAC-seq) of patient samples for research of myeloid leukemia development. Based in the Weischenfeldt lab since 2019. Jakob's main scientific interest is sequencing-based omics methodology, especially in their application on identifying mutations and processes at play in clonal evolution and cancer development.
• About/Fun fact: Passionate about sustainability and possessing a healthy appetite he produces a steady supply of sturdy homemade ryebread for his lunch box (and that of his kids) and prepares the sandwiches as meticulously as his experiments, never skipping a detail just like he never skips a healthy carrot snack.

Alessio Locallo

PhD Student, start 2020

• Profile: Alessio is a computational biologists with a MSc in Quantitative and Computational Biology from the University of Trento, Italy. He enrolled as a PhD student in 2019 in the group as part of a Marie-Curie program. His project aims to reconstruct the tumour evolution trajectories of glioblastoma patients, by applying and developing novel computational approaches. Understanding how glioblastoma evolves and resists treatments is crucial to provide better targeted therapies within the precision medicine context.
• About/Fun fact: He can talk for hours about how genome alignment works. He is a foodie who makes very Italian pesto out of 361 basil leafs. Loves when you break the spaghetti into tiny pieces. Long-term GNU/Linux user, he struggles every time he has to use a different operating system.

Maya Jeje Schuang Lü

MD PhD Student, started 2022

• Profile: Maya is a medical doctor from University of Copenhagen and finished first year residency as a medical oncologist before starting as a PhD student in February 2022. Her PhD project is about using drug screening on short-term cultured neurospheres grown from fresh glioblastoma primary tumour tissue to find individualized treatment for patients and to use single cell RNA sequencing to understand the resistance mechanisms of glioblastoma better.
• About/Fun fact: Maya is a highly skilled and enthusiastic badminton player (greatest sport in the world - or at least in Denmark). She plays badminton more than 4 hours on average per week! In general she focuses a lot on being healthy and, like Jakob, she will almost always bring her own lunch consisting of a lot of rye bread.

Balthasar Schlotmann

PhD Student, started 2022

• Profile: Balthasar studied Molecular Biomedicine in Bonn before doing his Masters in Bioinformatics at the University of Copenhagen, giving him a solid background in both, programming and biology. After some time as research assistant he started his PhD in the Weischenfeldt group in 2022. Balthasar is interested in germline genetics of cancer and his PhD project investigates the relationship between germline and somatic variants.
• About/Fun fact: Balthasar is not just using servers at work, but he also uses Archlinux at home on his personal computer and he makes a stand against the corrupting influence of US tech companies by using almost exclusively free software. When he is not in front of his home or office PC, he likes to sing in Copenhagens karaoke bars.

Daria Kiriy

PhD Student, started 2022

• Profile: Daria is a medical doctor, with a keen interest in cancer and bioinformatics. She started her biomedical career unconventionally as a bioinformatician with a job in the industry in a company specialising in precision medicine in cancer. Daria is interested in applying and developing computational tools to identify mechanisms of tumour evolution and drug resistance.
• About/Fun fact: Daria is an absolute coffee lover and can annoy you with discussion about best brewing techniques. She has a swimming qualification together with fear of depths. She once started her own lab coat and scrubs clothing line, because she couldn't find a decent one in her city.

Korbinian Schelzig

PhD Student, started 2023

• Profile: Korbinian did his MSc in Cancer Biology at the German Cancer Research Center in Heidelberg. Prior to his masters, he did his BSc at Heidelberg University and before that was trained as a biotechnical technician in Friedrichshafen. His PhD project combines wetlab and computational analysis to study SVs using chromatin technologies from cancer patients.
• About/Fun fact: Korbinian has a great interest in any sports where you chase a ball (Beach volleyball, Tennis, Football, …) or involves any kind of board (Snowboard, Kitesurf, … ). He always cooks too much and brings the leftovers in a big box the next day.

Irem Yucel

PhD Student, started 2025

• Profile: Irem completed her MSc in Bioinformatics at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Prior to that, she studied Biology at Middle East Technical University in Ankara. During her master’s program, she worked on long-read genome assembly of white spruce (Picea glauca), and she is now working with long-read data to investigate structural variants in repetitive regions of DNA in cancer patients.
• About/Fun fact: Irem loves being out in nature—especially camping—even though she absolutely hates being cold, so a fire pit is a must. She likes ginger (preferably in extreme quantities), loves learning new languages (but never commits to just one), and enjoys movies with good cinematography (especially the ones from Dan Laustsen)… despite having the attention span of a distracted shrimp.

Mathias Ærendahl Heldbo

MSc - future PhD student

• Profile: Mathias is a bioinformatician with an MSc in Bioinformatics from the University of Copenhagen. Before that, he was a scholarship rower at UC Berkeley, where he earned his Bachelor’s in Biochemistry. After returning to Copenhagen, he completed his master’s project in the Weischenfeldt group in collaboration with the Grønbæk group, followed by a guest researcher stay at deCODE genetics to kickstart the analysis for his current project. His work combines the bioinformatics expertise of the Weischenfeldt group with clinical insights from the Grønbæk group to study mosaic chromosomal alterations, with a focus on Y chromosome hotspot losses in blood and their links to general disease phenotypes.
• About/Fun fact: Outside the lab, Mathias enjoys cooking all kinds of food, especially “fish without legs” (fisk med ben), and he never does anything by halves, often preparing lunch portions large enough for everyone (or so you would think). When he isn’t in the kitchen, he is active in sports and runs a pickleball club he founded after breaking his wrist playing padel, he is not the most careful, but always all in, especially in karaoke, which he obviously excels at… if you close your ears.</b>

Pinelopi Mallia

Bioinformatics MSc student in the Weischenfeldt Lab.

• Pinelopi studies Bioinformatics at University of Copenhagen

Enrichetta Mileti

Role: Post Doc in Weischenfeldt lab 2021-2025.

Josephine Deleuran Hendriksen

In the Weischenfeldt Lab (2016 to 2025). Now postdoctoral fellow at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich
Role: PhD student and Post Doc

Etsehiwot “Essi” Girum Girma

Research assistant and PhD in the Weischenfeldt Lab from 2017 to 2025. Now postdoctoral fellow at Department of Internal Medicine, Technical University of Munich.
Role: PhD student

Miglè Mikutenaite

In the Weischenfeldt Lab from 2018 to 2025. Now Senior Scientist at Atrandi Biosciences
Role: PhD student

Evdoxia “Effie” Karadoulama

In the Weischenfeldt Lab from 2020 to 2024. Now postdoc at CCIT, Herlev Hospital with Prof Marco Donia.
Role: Post Doc

Eduardo Dias

In the Weischenfeldt Lab from 2019 to 2024
Role: PhD Student

André Vidas Olsen

PhD and short-term post doc in Weischenfeldt Lab from 2018 to 2024 studying complex SVs.
Role: PhD student/Post doc

Manuela Montes Gomez

Role: Master student from summer 2022 to summer 2023

Finnja Hendrike Becker

Role: Master student from winter 2022 to early 2023

Pascal Lafrenz

In the Weischenfeldt Lab from autmn 2021 to early spring 2022
Role: Erasmus student

Nikos Sidiropoulos

In the Weischenfeldt Lab from 2015 to 2021, now bioinformatician scientist at Novo Nordisk
Role: PhD and short-term Postdoc

Aidan Flynn

In the Weischenfeldt Lab 2017 - 2020, now Bioinformatician at The Rare Disease Oncogenomics Laboratory in Melbourne, Australia
Role: post doc

Apurva Gopisetty

In the Weischenfeldt Lab 2017 to 2018, now a PhD student at DKFZ, Heidelberg
Role: MSc student