Saez-Rodriguez Group

Systems Biomedicine

Sebastian Lobentanzer

During my PhD training in pharmacology, I combined my biomedical knowledge base with information technology; starting out in Java, I have mainly worked in R and graph database systems, and recently have taken up Python. I am an advocate for reproducibility in the biomedical sciences and prefer to work with integrated workflows involving markdown (Rmarkdown, Jupyter Notebook, and Obsidian). Further, I am very much committed to professional illustration and typesetting, British English, and the Oxford comma.

Research Interests

I am interested in the advancement of causal reasoning in interaction modelling at both the intra- and inter-cellular levels. A pharmacist by training, my focus lies on the complex dynamics of pathologic changes (transcription, translation, and protein interactions) and the molecular action of drugs. My aim is to integrate the informational wealth of modern omics data with the stern logic of causal reasoning, to address the issue of irreproducibility due to spurious correlation and to enable better predictions for the application of therapeutics. Focus points of my work will be overcoming the drug resistance of High-Grade Serous Ovarian Cancer (HGSOC) as part of the DECIDER EU project and integrating pharmacologic/toxicologic prior knowledge with omics data in the context of the TransQST project, both funded by the European Union (GA No. 965193 and No. 116030).

Professional Career

2021-present Postdoctoral research fellow at Heidelberg University Clinic, Heidelberg, Germany
2020-2021 Postdoctoral research fellow at Goethe-University, Frankfurt, Germany and Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel
2015-2020 Research fellow and teaching assistant at Goethe-University, Frankfurt and Hebrew University, Jerusalem
2014-present Pharmacist (deputy head), Spessart-Apotheke, Bad Orb, Germany

Education

2015-2020 PhD, Neuro-immune pharmacology, Goethe-University, Frankfurt, Germany
2008-2013 Pharmacy (Licensure), Goethe-University, Frankfurt, Germany
2004-2006 Audio engineer (Diploma), School of Audio Engineering, Frankfurt, Germany