PEOPLE

Eleni M. Tomazou, PhD

Principal Investigator

eleni.tomazou@ccri.at
+43 1 40470 4045

Eleni Tomazou has been a PI at the St. Anna Children’s Cancer Research Institute (CCRI, Vienna, Austria) since January 2018. She has established a research program focusing on epigenome-based precision medicine at CCRI. She has a strong background in epigenomics research and two years’ experience in clinical diagnostics and management of a high-throughput diagnostics lab. Prior to joining CCRI, she did her PhD at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute (Cambridge, UK) and postdoctoral training at the Broad Institute and the Harvard Department for Stem Cell and Regenerative Biology (Cambridge, USA). She is a 2016 recipient of the Elise Richter Fellowship, a prestigious career development grant for female scientists offered by the Austrian Science Foundation (FWF). In her free time she enjoys exploring the hidden gems of Vienna.

Lisa Daniel, MSc

PhD Student

lisa.daniel@ccri.at
+43 1 40470 4014

Lisa studied molecular biotechnology in Vienna and performed her bachelor’s thesis project at the University of Amsterdam. During her master’s she did internships at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology and Research Center for Molecular Medicine.  She carried out her final master’s thesis project at Boehringer Ingelheim where she explored novel gene-drug interactions. Currently, Lisa focusses her research on the identification of novel non-genetic drug resistance mechanisms in Ewing sarcoma. She spends her free time mostly cooking, bouldering or at home with her cats.

Daria Pajak, MSc

Research assistant

daria.pajak@ccri.at
+43 1 40470 4014

Daria has done her bachelor’s studies in biotechnology at the University of Silesia, then she completed her master’s degree in genetics and molecular biosciences at the University of Helsinki. Daria joined the lab in 2021 as a technical assistant. She spends her free time either cycling or enjoying a walk through a city.

Peter Peneder, MSc

PhD Student

peter.peneder@ccri.at
+43 1 40470 4034

Peter did his bachelor's in microbiology and genetics before switching to bioinformatics for his master's. After an exchange semester at the University of Amsterdam, where he worked on finding novel B- and T-cell receptor alleles, he joined the lab in 2018 for his master thesis.

Peter is developing and applying bioinformatic methods and machine learning approaches to learn more about how pediatric cancers arise and how to use liquid biopsies to improve their identification, detection, and monitoring. Peter is especially interested in fragmentomics, computational methods for single-cell data analysis, and machine learning. In his free time, he enjoys reading good books, bouldering, running, and discussions about philosophy.

Marcus Tötzl, MSc

PhD Student

marcus.toetzl@ccri.at
+43 1 40470 4034

Marcus obtained his bachelor’s and master’s degree in Molecular Biotechnology. His scientific journey took him to a Basel-based start-up, BioVersys, where he focused on identifying new drug targets in antibiotic resistance mechanisms, and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where he investigated the mode of action of a novel cancer vulnerability. The project he has recently embarked on for his PhD focuses on a functional dissection of the dysregulated enhancer landscape in Ewing sarcoma, which allows him to pursue his fascination for single cell technologies and other next generation sequencing applications. In his leisure time he fancies himself a cinema lover and enjoys reading books and graphic novels as well as practicing different kinds of sport.

Stefan Terlecki-Zaniewicz, PhD

Postdoc

stefan.terlecki-zaniewicz@ccri.at
+43 1 40470 4034

Stefan studied molecular biotechnology in Vienna and worked at the University of Tromsø and the University of Oxford for his bachelor and master degree, respectively. During his PhD studies, he identified that leukemogenic fusion proteins form biomolecular condensates that are essential for leukemia development. In the Tomazou group, Stefan aims to establish a differentiation platform based on induced pluripotent stem cells to model different types of sarcomas and identify early alterations in gene regulation. In his precious leisure time, Stefan likes to do all kinds of sports and cooks delicious food.

Alumni

Former research assistant, now senior scientist (NGS) at ViennaLab

Adrian Stütz, PhD

Abdelrahman Abdelgawad, MSc

Former master student, now manufacturing scientist at Takeda