Book a Scientist! Ilka Bischofs
What can we learn from microbial life? Explore bacterial trade-offs, communication and stress management.
Dr Ilka Bischofs is a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Terrestrial Microbiology and a member of the M4C Cluster of Excellence. However, she lives in Heidelberg and conducts her research at BioQuant. Her field of research is called 'CATS'. This has nothing to do with cats, though; it stands for 'Complex Adaptive Traits': the ability of microbes to adapt to changing living conditions.
There is a lot we can learn from bacteria. For example: How do they communicate? How do they make decisions, and which strategies help them to cope with stress? What can we learn from this for our own lives? After all, sucess and survival is not always determined by size or strength, but by the ability to adapt to change. Ilka Bischofs and her team are researching these adaptive abilities to optimise and develop new biotechnological processes.