New professor in Jena: microbe researcher with an international background!

New professor in Jena: microbe researcher with an international background!

At the beginning of 2025, Sarela García-Santamarina took up her position as a new professor at Leibniz-HKI and the University of Jena. She heads the newly founded department for Deep Microbiome Metabolomics, which deals intensively with the complex metabolic processes of microorganisms and investigates their influence on active pharmaceutical ingredients.

A central goal of her research is to understand how the human gut microbiome influences the effectiveness of drugs. García-Santamarina, who is from Spain, was appointed through a joint appeal process. Her certificate of appointment was presented by Prof. Dr. Karina Weichold on January 7th.

Academic background

Sarela García-Stamarina can look back on an impressive academic career. She completed her chemistry studies in Spain, followed by a master's degree in molecular biology in London and a doctorate in biomedicine in Spain. After an initial postdoc phase in Durham, USA, she continued her research in a second postdoc phase at EMBL in Heidelberg. Before moving to Jena, she already led her own research group in Portugal.

Research at the Leibniz-HKI is intended to provide insights into the metabolism of new active ingredients for drug development. Among other things, collaboration is planned with the Jena Cluster of Excellence Balance of the Microverse and experts in bioinformatics. For scientific inquiries, Dr. Michael Ramm available.

For those who would like to delve further into related topics, articles such as those in Nature will be published, insights into the chemical transformations of xenobiotics by the human intestinal microbiota and their far-reaching significance.

– Submitted by West-East media