02/07/2024

New Cluster Manager for nanodiag BW

Biochemist Dr. Hanna Hasselblatt joins the management team

With her many years of experience as a research biochemist on the one hand and as a coordinator of large consortia on the other, the new Cluster Manager Hanna Hasselblatt is contributing tailored expertise to the Clusters4Future nanodiag BW from February 2024 on. Her experience as a project coordinator in a large consortium funded by the Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in the Medical Informatics Initiative has prepared her very well for the challenges and opportunities of her new position. In her new role at nanodiag BW, Dr. Hasselblatt wants to create a solid foundation for cooperation in the innovation network and promote an open culture of innovation and risk-taking. Her vision for the future of the nanodiag BW cluster is based on the basic idea of the BMBF's Future Cluster Initiative to bring together academic basic research and product innovation in regional networks and thus bring cutting-edge research into application more quickly: "My goal is to make nanodiag BW a nucleus of accelerated innovation, where members from basic research, development and companies - especially founders - find high added value."

Hasselblatt's professional career was shaped by her switch between the two worlds of 'basic research in biochemistry' and 'project management': specializing in biochemical and biophysical methods, she used X-ray crystallography to determine the structure of a bacterial enzyme in her Freiburg dissertation, before initially working as a project manager in the field of health economics. After further research activities in nearby countries, she returned to Freiburg and worked as a project manager and site coordinator for publicly funded projects, most recently a DFG-funded research training group. A project on protein import in mitochondria in a world-leading Freiburg research group finally drew her back into the laboratory. This recently resulted in a publication in the high-ranked "Nature" journal, to which Hasselblatt contributed (Fielden et al. (2023), Central role of Tim17 in mitochondrial presequence protein translocation).

Over the next three months, Hanna Hasselblatt will gradually take over from Dr. Stephan Karmann, who has been in charge of the consortium since the conception phase and will now be retiring. "We are very pleased to be able to fill this important position with a high-calibre candidate in an organic transition," says cluster spokesperson and Hahn-Schickard Institute Director Prof. Dr. Felix von Stetten.

The Clusters4Future nanodiag BW  

The Clusters4Future nanodiag BW uses nanopore technologies to identify epigenetic factors influencing diseases and apply the resulting diagnostic and therapeutic solutions. The consortium, which includes the Universities of Freiburg, Stuttgart and RWTH Aachen, the University Medical Center Freiburg, the MPI of Immunobiology and Epigenetics, the Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials, institutes of the Innovationsallianz Baden-Württemberg and numerous large, medium-sized and small companies, has been funded by the BMBF since April 2023 and is coordinated by Hahn-Schickard together with the University of Freiburg.