Dana Westphal

This is my very first experience outside of research and development. Here at biosaxony e.V., an association for biotechnology and life sciences industry in Saxony, I am assisting in organizing the bionection2014. I am glad to have gotten the chance to see what it means to organize a partnering conference for technology transfer in Life Sciences. I am not only learning about general conference organization, but also about pitch presentations, partnering tools, biotechnology transfer and patenting.

These were very exciting 6 months of my life. Whether I was hiking in Chilean Patagonia, the Inca Trail in Peru or the Cotopaxi volcano in Ecuador, diving in the warm waters of Galapagos or swimming with dolphins and Caimans in the Amazon River, I truly enjoyed my time exploring and organising. I also expanded my language repertoire by doing intensive Spanish courses and by teaching myself Portuguese. Following my love for dancing, I danced all over South America and took classes in every major city.

My 5 years as a postdoc at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute have been truly amazing and very successful. The fundamental question of how certain proteins drive the death of a cell and whether this knowledge can be exploited in the search for novel ways to kill cancer cells was the centre of my investigations. I became experienced in driving my own projects, but also to collaborate with co-workers and superiors across 3 divisions, thus significantly improving my negotiation and people skills.

This short-term position aimed at the characterisation of mouse norovirus, the harmless relative to human norovirus, a culprit that is responsible for human gastroenteritis. Apart from getting to know yet another viral system, I expanded my knowledge on viral detection and replication methods as well as RNA work.

I really enjoyed my time as a PhD student. My project dealt with the question of how poxviruses learn to survive in infected cells. It was very successful, leading to the publication of two first-author papers and numerous presentations at conferences in New Zealand and Europe, garnering many awards. Executing and discussing research projects, demonstrating/tutoring undergraduate students and writing a PhD thesis in a different language to my mother tongue was challenging, but also very rewarding.

Two months as a research fellow to continue with the work of my Master’s. Finally I got paid for the work I did.

A very interesting project on the characterisation of Influenza A viruses and my first job outside of Dresden. The Robert Koch Institute was a very exciting place to work in, because of its clustering of excellent research into infectious diseases.

My first overseas trip that meant to be for one year to do my Master’s and to learn English evolved in a 5-year stay and a PhD. I really enjoyed my time in New Zealand. My project was very interesting and diverse, dealing with the question of how poxviruses learn to survive in infected cells.

I specialised in genetics, biochemistry and virology. I graduated four months prior to regular study time within the top 30% of biology students from all German universities. I completed my Master’s thesis at the Institute of Virology.

Although I was enrolled in this school because of my advanced knowledge in Russian, during my time at school I developed a great interest in all science subjects and I decided that I wanted to study biology.