News

The new year brings exciting developments: several new research projects are launching in our group, and ongoing projects continue successfully. A special highlight is the GDCh Biochemistry 2026 conference "From chemical structures to biological functions", which we will host from March 16-18, 2026 in Würzburg. We cordially invite you to be part of this international scientific exchange!

Dr Martin Volek was awarded the Czech prize ‘Česká hlava’ (‘Czech Brain’) in the ‘Doctorandus’ category in the field of natural sciences. The award ceremony took place during a gala broadcast on Czech public television.

Special attention for Martin Volek's research on in vitro selection at the RNA Club meeting 2025 Prague on 31 October, thanks in part to his ‘messages’ from Bavaria.

With its focus on RNA modifications and the opening of new perspectives for therapeutic manipulations in mammalian systems, ‘The epitranscriptome’ is the most established conference series on this topic. For Sarah, this is a great opportunity to present the state of research in the Höbartner working group and to learn about the latest findings in this field of science.

"It’s been an incredible experience attending the Oligonucleotide Therapeutics Society (OTS) 2025 Annual Meeting for the first time! It was amazing to see and be part of such a diverse range of cutting-edge work on oligonucleotides under one roof," Arpan sums up his visit in Budapest.

PhD students Maria Greve and Hsuan-Ai Chen represented the Höbartner group at the 25th anniversary Symosium celebrating ChemBioChem and ChemPhysChem in Berlin on October 23-24.

From the beginning of October until the end of December, Theertha Kannoli Paloran will be part of the Höbartner research group thanks to the GIANT exchange program funded by the DAAD and the Indian SPARC.

In October 2025, Claudia Höbartner presented invited lectures at ChemBioParis 2025 and the ACS Global Scientific Conference at IIT Bombay.

Claudia Höbartner, Manisha Walunj, and Sarah Christopher presented their latest research findings at the 13th Meeting of the GBM Study Section “RNA Biochemistry” & Workshop “Frontiers in RNA Chemical Biology.”

With their poster "The Synthetic Life of Modified tRNAs", Eva and Julia convinced the jury at the first symposium "Interconnections and Cross-Regulation of Gene Expression Processes" and were honored for their outstanding work.

As an invited speaker, Claudia Höbartner was accompanied by PhD students Tina Jungnickel, Nikolas Farn, and Konstantin Isenberg, who presented their current research work in poster presentations at the XIIth Nucleic Acid Chemistry Meeting of the DNG in Hamburg.

Claudia Höbartner and Julia Dietzsch attended the “Methods and Applications in Fluorescence” (MAF 2025) conference, which took place in Montreal from August 24 to 27. Claudia was an invited speaker and Julia was selected to give a talk in a session on fluorescent nucleic acids chaired by Yitzhak Tor.

Congratulations to Dr. Martin Volek for receiving the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral fellowship! Martin will carry out his research project in the Höbartner group and focus on the in vitro selection of new nucleic acid catalysts for epigenetic research.

We are happy to introduce our new group members Saumya Kumar Gupta and Anjan Pal. Welcome to the University of Würzburg and good luck for your PhD projects!

Our RNAmed PhD students, Arpan Banerjee and Dominik Rappert, accompanied by Claudia Höbartner, took part in the RNAmed retreat from July 2 to 5 on the beautiful island of San Servolo in Venice, Italy.