Dr. rer. nat. Jana Hertel

Biography

Jana Hertel is working as a Post-Doc in the bioinformatics research group of Peter F. Stadler at the University Leipzig, Germany since spring 2009. She studies sequence/structure conservation, alignment and prediction of specific non-coding RNA genes. She received her Doctorate degree in computer sciences in spring 2009 at the University Leipzig. During the three years of her PhD studies she spent one year at the Theoretical Biochemistry Group at the University of Vienna, Austria in the group of Ivo L. Hofacker. Jana graduated with a Diploma in computer sciences at the University of Leipzig in November 2005.

Currently she is working on tertiary interactions of single RNA residues that happen to influence the RNA secondary structure significantly. Further, she still analyses the evolutionary history of microRNAs and small nucleolar RNAs. The two programs RNAmicro and SnoReport are constantly updated with new information to improve the quality of their predictions. Jana is also involved in the development of novel alignment and structure prediction techniques that  enhance the interpretation of relationship and function of non-coding RNA molecules.

Outside of work, Jana enjoys spending time with her family and a lot of sports. To relax she likes to paint.