Double Funding for HIPS Junior Researchers

Florian Hubrich and Mariia Nesterkina receive funding from the Klaus Tschira Boost Fund.

News

04/01/2025

Florian Hubrich and Mariia Nesterkina receive competitive funding from the Klaus-Tschira-Boost-Fund

Acquiring external funding is an integral part of any young scientist’s path towards an independent research career. Such additional funds not only make their own scientific success visible, but also give them freedom to implement new and possibly riskier project ideas. One funding instrument that focuses on supporting early stage researchers is the Klaus-Tschira-Boost-Fund. In the current round of applications, 15 out of more than 300 applicants were selected to receive funding of up to 120,000 Euros each – amongst them the junior researchers Mariia Nesterkina and Florian Hubrich from the Helmholtz Institute for Pharmaceutical Research Saarland (HIPS). The HIPS is a site of the Helmholtz Centre for Infection Research (HZI) in collaboration with Saarland University. As so-called “Boost Fellows”, Mariia Nesterkina and Florian Hubrich benefit not only from the funding itself, but also from a series of workshops on career development and gain access to extensive career counseling and coaching services. The funded projects are set to start between April and October 2025 and will run for 24 months.

Mariia Nesterkina studied pharmaceutical chemistry in Odesa before completing her doctorate at the Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry in Kyiv in 2017. She has been conducting research in the departments “Drug Design and Optimisation” as well as “Biological Barriers and Drug Delivery” at HIPS since 2022, where she is currently working on her habilitation in pharmaceutical technology and establishing her research group, “Smart Pharmaceutical Materials and Systems”. With the support of the Klaus-Tschira-Boost-Fund, she aims to explore the potential of thermotropic liquid crystals for the controlled release of anti-infective drugs. These liquid crystals transition from a solid to a liquid crystalline state upon contact with the skin, enabling targeted antibiotic delivery for wound and skin infections. Nesterkina’s research will specifically focus on infections caused by leishmaniasis and tuberculosis.

Florian Hubrich studied biology and chemistry at the University of Freiburg, where he also completed his doctorate in 2014. After several years in the pharmaceutical industry, Hubrich turned back to academic research – initially at ETH Zurich and, since the beginning of 2024, as a junior research group leader at the HIPS and Saarland University. He aims to use the newly acquired research funds to investigate the biosynthetic potential of extremophilic bacteria in more detail. Although such organisms usually have very compact genomes, they are able to produce bioactive natural products. In his project, Hubrich will analyze the underlying genes in order to identify novel chemical scaffolds and make them accessible for drug development.