How to become a pediatric neurologist

Milestones. Today I passed my board exam for pediatric neurology or neuropediatrics, as we call it in Germany. Even though I am usually not big on celebrating occasions like this, I wanted to use this blog post to reflect upon a journey that led me to three different continents and started eleven years ago in the foothills of AppalachiaContinue reading

A PhD in genomics – lessons learned

This is it! With finishing my PhD I have become an “adult” member of the scientific Graduierungcommunity. I grew out of a bachelor in biochemistry on transfection methods in neuronal cell lines, a research semester in Canberra with focus on B-cell immunology and master into a  PhD in epilepsy genomics. I was involved in the EPICURE IGE copy number projects and recently my work changed to the analysis of rare variants in RE and IGE in the EUROepinomics framework. During this time I was involved in the identification of variants in RBFOX genes and GRIN2A as well as other risk factors which are currently in review. I share my experience and thoughts and hope they help others who are about to or have just started their thesis. The aspects reflect my personal view and some are specific for graduation in disease genomics. Continue reading