Sofia Kirke Forslund-Startceva

Sofia Kirke Forslund-Startceva is a computational biologist, professor for Applied Microbiology at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin and head of the research group “Host-microbiome factors in cardiovascular disease“ at Max Delbrück Center. Originally from Sweden, she quickly discovered that mathematics is in everything around us. For the last decade, she has worked with -omics analyses to investigate how the diverse array of bacteria in the gut affect our health and vice versa. Her focus are host-microbiome interactions in the context of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. A variety of related questions have been arising in the process, including questions around evolution and how to develop statistical approaches for separating disease signatures from treatment effects in human cohorts. She is interested in gender medicine both as a feminist, as a trans woman, and as someone with a scientific interest in overarching “master regulators” of biological processes such as those within human endocrinology.