Nizet Lab People: Maren von Köckritz-Blickwede

Maren von Köckritz-Blickwede, PhD
Postgraduate Researcher

Maren von Köckritz-Blickwede joins us from Germany, where she studied biology at the University of Hanover. During this time, she spent one year at the Universidad Nacional de Heredia, Costa Rica, where she performed epidemiological studies about vesicular stomatitis viruses in horses. Her master's research studies at the Fraunhofer Institute for Toxicology and Experimental Medicine characterized the biological properties of primary porcine and murine lung epithelial cells. She then pursued PhD studies at the Federal Agricultural Research Centre for Animal Science in Neustadt-Mariensee, Germany, where her disseration was entitled “Antibiotic-dependent modulation of staphylococcal virulence properties”. Subsequently, she spent three years as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Eva Medina at the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research in Braunschweig, Germany where she studied the role of host genetic and immune factors involved in the susceptibility and resistance against group A Streptococcus and Staphylococcus aureus infections.

Here, Maren’s project examines the role of mast cells and mast cell signaling pathways in host immune and inflammatory responses against Gram-positive pathogens.