Dr. Amelia Barber has recently been appointed head of the junior research group “Fungal Informatics” at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena within the Cluster of Excellence Balance of the Microverse.

After finishing her PhD in Microbiology and Immunology at the University of Utah, Dr. Barber came to Jena as a Postdoctoral fellow at the Leibniz Institute for Natural Product Research and Infection Biology – Hans Knöll Institute.

Amelia Barber’s research focuses on environmental fungi that cause human disease. These fungi can be found everywhere in nature, often living in the soil. Barber and her team aim to understand how these fungi acquire antifungal resistance and how their lives in the environment prepare them for human infection using a combination of experimental and computational approaches.

“I especially love hiking through the beautiful nature around Jena”, says nature-lover Amelia Barber. When she is not studying fungi in the lab, she can be found exploring Jena’s surroundings.