BHOOMIKA BHAT
PhD student
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I am interested in understanding how nematode infections influence nestmate recognition and social behavior in ants. I am also interested in understanding the chemical basis for the changes in these behaviors. I completed my Masters at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. My Masters project was to understand the influence of community coalescence in the evolution of predatory abilities and social traits in lab-evolved strains of a bacterial predaor Myxococcus xanthus.
ZIMAI LI
PhD student
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I am interested in the interplay between information flow, social dynamics, and disease transmission in groups. I received my Master’s degree in Evolutionary Biology from the University of Groningen and the University of Munich through the MEME Erasmus program, during which I studied the breeding ecology of thorn-tailed rayadito and inbreeding avoidance strategies in spotted hyenas.
LAI KA LO
Postdoctoral researcher
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My fascination with different host strategies to overcome the spread of disease led me to join the Ulrich lab in 2023 to study the link between viral disease dynamics in ant colonies and their social network structure. My PhD studies with Professor Joachim Kurtz at the University of Muenster, focused on the impacts of individual immunological experience of Tribolium castaneum on their chemical profiles, microbiome and niche choice. I also utilised experimental evolution to study the role of niche construction for host adaptation to a bacterial pathogen.
TZE HANN (IRENE) NG
Postdoctoral researcher
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Since completing my PhD at National Cheng Kung University in Taiwan, I have been actively involved in crustacean research and have gained much knowledge in immune responses of arthropods. My focus is on immune priming in invertebrates, which includes immune training and specificity. Although invertebrates lack the adaptive immunity that confers immune specificity in vertebrates, I am interested in the “alternative” form of immunity that drive the processes. My previous postdoctoral research at the University of Muenster showed immune priming helps copepods perform better against recounter parasites, and the response confers immune specificity. I joined Ulrich Group in October 2024 to study how immune priming contributes to pathogen defenses and behaviors in social animals like clonal raider ants.
ALEXANDROS PANTAGIAS
​PhD student​
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I am a new doctoral researcher in the Social Behaviour Group. I received my BSc degree in Biology from the University of Crete, while also carrying out research at the LMU Munich as an exchange student. During my masters at the University of Heidelberg and EMBL, I gained expertise in diverse disciplines such as protein biochemistry, genetics, omics technologies, structural and developmental biology. My MSc thesis project centred around understanding motor protein-mediated mRNA delivery as well as spatially restricted protein accumulation during Drosophila oogenesis.
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Over the course of my PhD, I will investigate, under the supervision of Dr. Ulrich and Dr. Sachse, how the immune and nervous systems, in the clonal raider ant and D. melanogaster, ‘cooperate’ - in the presence of pathogenic agents - to enable organismal survival. The effect of immune responses on chemosensory circuits will be probed, for instance​.​
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BAPTISTE PIQUERET
Postdoctoral researcher (personal website)
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Interested in the behaviour of ants and how they use their refined sense of smell, I joined the Ulrich lab in 2022 to study brood care in the clonal ants. During my PhD, I studied the learning and memory of ants, and tested if they could be used as bio-detectors of human cancer. More specifically, I trained ants to associate the volatile compounds emitted by cancer cells to a reward, and see that ants were able to discriminate cancer samples from cancer-free ones based on olfaction. I also used chemistry tools to identify the compounds.
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SARAH ROGOZ
PhD student
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Before joining the group I obtained my Masters in Physics at the University of Cologne working on network analysis based on the morphology of sclerits and muscles in the head capsule of insects with Prof. Blanke (University Bonn) and Prof. Berg (University Cologne). Switching from a static to a dynamic network system, I am interested in further resolving the colony interactions of the clonal raider ant. For this I am working with tracking of color-marked O. biroi workers and translating their behavior into proximity/ behavioral colony interaction networks to investigate colony dynamics and pathogen spread.
WIBKE SEIBT
Technician​
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​I have been working as a technician at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology for 20 years and I am very happy to support the Ulrich group since 2023. Our goal is developing a method to track nematode transmission between ants via live staining and thus get a better understanding of the behavior of the clonal raider ants.
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ANTJE SCHMALTZ
Technician​
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ROLAND SPIESS
Technician​
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I started working as technician at the MPI in 2020 in the department of Bill Hansson.
There I was taught to do micro-injections with Drosophila embryos to generate transgenic flies.
Additionally I was involved in coordinating the tasks required for fly-food management and Locust breeding.
In June 2024 I transferred to Yuko Ulrich's group to apply my micro-injection skills to ant eggs,
and my coordination experience to help breeding the required ants.
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SANDRA TRETTER
PhD student​
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Since my undergraduate studies, I have been fascinated by ants, examining their chemical communication and behavior. I then continued working with ants and studied the brain regions responsible for processing olfactory information via micro CT scans. I received both my Bachelor’s and Master’s degree at the University of Münster in Jürgen Gadau’s group. During my Master’s program, I began working with immunity in beetles, deepening my interest in the insect immune system. Now, as a Ph.D. student in the Ulrich lab, I can combine my research interests in sociality, the immune system, and chemical communication by studying the clonal raider ant.
YUKO ULRICH
Principal Investigator
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I am interested in the interplay between social organization and disease resistance in animal societies. I received my PhD from ETH Zurich, where I investigated parasite transmission in bumblebees under the supervision of Paul Schmid-Hempel. During my postdoc in the Kronauer lab at the Rockefeller University, I helped establish the clonal raider ant as a model for the study of social and collective behavior. I then started an independent research group at the University Lausanne, which moved to ETH Zurich, and finally, to the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology.
PAST MEMBERS
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Giacomo Alciatore, PhD student, Aug 2017 – Apr 2022
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Jérémie Bidaux, MSc student, Sep 2017 – Feb 2019
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Thalita Oliveira Honorato, MSc student, Mar 2018 – Feb 2019
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Stephanie Jud, MSc student, Apr 2021 – Oct 2021
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Daniel Knebel, Postdoctoral researcher, May 2021 – Feb 2023
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Qi Wang, MSc student, 2022 – 2023
- Luis Wirsching, MSc student, 2022 – 2023