Urban group

One Health

AI to preserve planetary health and biodiversity

Lara Urban’s Helmholtz AI young investigator group, which is also part of the Helmholtz Pioneer Campus, focuses on the application of Molecular Biology and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the context of planetary health. Research topics include, but are not limited to:

  • leveraging genomics and AI to study the diversity and distribution of bioaerosols and their impact on human health, also in the context of climate change;
  • pioneering portable genomic and data analysis approaches for in situ real-time detection and classification of pathogens;
  • monitoring the spread of zoonotic diseases, in the context of both, animal health/biodiversity conservation and global health.

Visit Lara Urban's personal website

 

 

Selected publications

  • Cheng, H., (...), Urban, L., (...)., Li, H. (2022) Haplotype-resolved assembly of diploid individuals without parental data. Nature Biotechnology. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41587-022-01261-x
  • Formenti, G., (...), Urban, L., (...)., Bálint, M. (2022). The era of reference genomes in conservation genomics. Trends in Ecology & Evolution 37, 3: 197-202. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tree.2021.11.008
  • Urban, L.*, (…), Stammnitz, M. R. (2021). Freshwater monitoring with nanopore sequencing. eLife 10:e61504.

A full list of publications can be found here.

Team members

  • Amit Fenn, Postdoc
  • Anastasiia Grekova, Master student

  • Daniel Gygax, Master student

  • Eddie Martin, Visitor

  • Albert Perlas Puente, Postdoc

  • Tim Reska, PhD student
  • Harika Ürel, PhD student