Science
I conducted my PhD between 2020 and 2024 at the Leibniz-HKI in Jena about modeling and simulation of dynamical systems – applied to biomedical research questions and data. During this time in the process of studying my topic, I could develop a broad understanding of modeling, dynamical systems, and scientific thinking that extends far beyond a single discipline and can be applied to a wide range of real-world problems. After defending my doctoral thesis, I continued my academic work as a postdoctoral researcher and later as a guest researcher while transitioning into industry. On this page, I want to share from time to time some attempts to make real world scenarios more understandable.
Thesis & scientific publications
- Doctoral Thesis – Mathematical modeling of spatiotemporal host defense mechanisms against pulmonary fungal infections (2024)
- Battista M, Bachelot Y, Franke T, Saffer C B, Zimmermann L, Teuber L, Figge MT, Vilhena C# (2026) Environmental cues shape extracellular vesicles biogenesis and function in Streptococcus pneumoniae in BMC Microbiol
- Miriana Battista, Christoph Saffer B, Marc Thilo Figge and Cláudia Vilhena* (2025) Mechanistic Insights into the Role of Extracellular Vesicles at the Bacterial−Host Interface in ACS Infectious Diseases
- Saffer B C, Timme S, Ortiz SC, Bertuzzi M, Figge MT (2024) Spatiotemporal modeling quantifies cellular contributions to uptake of Aspergillus fumigatus in the human lung in Communications Biology
- Luce Perie, Selina Stippa, Christoph Saffer B, Andrea Hartmann , Mathias Mörgelin, Svante L. H. Zipfel, Marc Thilo Figge, Thorsten Wiech, Christine Skerka, and Peter F. Zipfel (2024) Unique target binding by the C-terminal Region of FHR1 provides a new perception of aHUS Pathology in Front. Hematol.
- Saffer B C, Timme S, Rudolph P, Figge MT# (2023) Surrogate infection model predicts optimal alveolar macrophage number for clearance of Aspergillus fumigatus infections in PJ Syst Biol Appl.
- T N M Hoang, Z Cseresnyés, S Hartung, M Blickensdorf, C Saffer B, K Rennert, A S Mosig, M von Lilienfeld-Toal #, M T Figge# (2022) Invasive aspergillosis-on-chip: A quantitative treatment study of human Aspergillus fumigatus infection in Biomaterials
Latest Articles
-
Parallelism between thoughts and the double-split experiment
In the early 1800s, experiments that later became known as the Double-slit experiment revealed something strange about the world. Electrons don’t always behave like solid little particles. Sometimes they behave like waves — spread out, probabilistic, not clearly in one place. And then something interesting happens: when you measure them, the ambiguity disappears. Suddenly the…
-
Simulations of the German “DFB-Pokal”: Evaluating Tournament Outcomes with a Stochastic Model
In the last season 2023/2024 of the German cup in football, the so-called “DFB-Pokal”, a team from the 3rd league, 1. FC Saarbrücken, made it to the semi-finals. Not only does this seem to be a rare event, but they also eliminated three Bundesliga clubs in previous rounds. By the semi-finals, Bayer Leverkusen was the…
-
Why You Should Think (at least) Twice: A Scientific Approach to Decision-Making
The world bestseller “Thinking, Fast and Slow” by Daniel Kahneman explores two systems of thought: We will look at System 2. It is responsible for complex judgments and decisions requiring effort and concentration. It addresses how this deliberate thought process can be influenced by biases and overconfidence, often leading to errors in decision-making. But what does…
-
Unveiling the Behavior of Blinds with a Pipeline of Python, Machine Learning, and React
A year ago, my colleague and I embarked on a fascinating journey to uncover the mysterious behavior of our office blinds. We documented our initial findings in the article “Behavior of blinds: A sketch of scientific practice.” Since then, we have collected more data and refined our approach to analyze and predict the movement of…
-
Hypothesis testing on football players consciously getting yellow cards to get suspended
When I recently watched the Saturday afternoon football games of the first German Bundesliga (the highest league in Germany), I noticed something that I have been observing for many years. Players seem to get yellow cards on purpose to get suspended for the next away game. Why is that? In a season, the yellow cards of…
-
Behavior of blinds: A sketch of scientific practice
At my workplace, my colleague and I were very annoyed by the blinds that went down at least once a day, usually before lunch, although no sun was shining into our office before afternoon (windows faced west). After a while, we thought we had discovered a pattern. So we started writing down the times when…
