Tabea Brick joined the Asthma and Allergy Research Group in 2014. After finishing her Master Thesis (ω-3 fatty acids contribute to the asthma-protective effect of unprocessed cow’s milk, Brick et al.) she started to work there as research assistant. The main topic of her PhD thesis is the analysis of different milk ingredients accountable for the protective farm-milk effect on asthma.

Martin Depner holds a degree in psychology, and is specialised in mathematics and statistics. He also has experience in empirical social research including planning, implementation, analysis and quality management of studies.
2005 he joined the group at the Hauner’sches Children Hospital of Munich where his focus was first the analysis of genetic association studies in asthma and allergy research. He wrote his doctoral thesis about genetic determinants of asthma (methods and application). 2010, he finished a postgraduate education in medical biometry with a focus on interaction analysis in genetics. To get customized with analysis of next generation sequence data, he spent six months in the institute of human genetics of the University of Chicago under supervision of Prof. Dan Nicolae http://www.stat.uchicago.edu/~nicolae/ and participated in different workshops on genomics.
He is currently working on microbiome studies (analysing 16sRNA data), but also involved in different European farm studies with a special interest on phenotypes of asthma and allergies and new methodological considerations in these topics.
 
Selected publications:  

Depner, M., O. Fuchs, J. Genuneit, A. M. Karvonen, A. Hyvarinen, V. Kaulek, C. Roduit, J. Weber, B. Schaub, R. Lauener, M. Kabesch, P. I. Pfefferle, U. Frey, J. Pekkanen, J. C. Dalphin, J. Riedler, C. Braun-Fahrlander, E. von Mutius and M. J. Ege (2014). "Clinical and epidemiologic phenotypes of childhood asthma." Am J Respir Crit Care Med 189(2): 129-138.
Lluis, A., M. Depner*, B. Gaugler, P. Saas, V. I. Casaca, D. Raedler, S. Michel, J. Tost, J. Liu, J. Genuneit, P. Pfefferle, M. Roponen, J. Weber, C. Braun-Fahrlander, J. Riedler, R. Lauener, D. A. Vuitton, J. C. Dalphin, J. Pekkanen, E. von Mutius and B. Schaub (2014). "Increased regulatory T-cell numbers are associated with farm milk exposure and lower atopic sensitization and asthma in childhood." J Allergy Clin Immunol 133(2): 551-559.
Depner, M., M. J. Ege, J. Genuneit, J. Pekkanen, M. Roponen, M. R. Hirvonen, J. C. Dalphin, V. Kaulek, S. Krauss-Etschmann, J. Riedler, C. Braun-Fahrlander, C. Roduit, R. Lauener, P. I. Pfefferle, J. Weber and E. von Mutius (2013). "Atopic sensitization in the first year of life." J Allergy Clin Immunol 131(3): 781-788.
Illi, S., M. Depner*, J. Genuneit, E. Horak, G. Loss, C. Strunz-Lehner, G. Buchele, A. Boznanski, H. Danielewicz, P. Cullinan, D. Heederik, C. Braun-Fahrlander and E. von Mutius (2012). "Protection from childhood asthma and allergy in Alpine farm environments-the GABRIEL Advanced Studies." J Allergy Clin Immunol 129(6): 1470-1477 e1476.
Moffatt, M. F., M. Kabesch, L. Liang, A. L. Dixon, D. Strachan, S. Heath, M. Depner, A. von Berg, A. Bufe, E. Rietschel, A. Heinzmann, B. Simma, T. Frischer, S. A. Willis-Owen, K. C. Wong, T. Illig, C. Vogelberg, S. K. Weiland, E. von Mutius, G. R. Abecasis, M. Farrall, I. G. Gut, G. M. Lathrop and W. O. Cookson (2007). "Genetic variants regulating ORMDL3 expression contribute to the risk of childhood asthma." Nature 448(7152): 470-473.  

* shared first authorship

Since spring 2007 Nicola Korherr has been assisting Erika von Mutius in coordinating the EU projects FORALLVENT and EFRAIM and organizing the fieldwork for the German part of the PASTURE/EFRAIM cohort.

Elisabeth Schmaußer-Hechfellner studied at FernUniversität Hagen and achieved the Bachelor degree in Informatics. In her Bachelor thesis she analyzed the correlations between allergic diseases of children and certain environmental factors using Markov Logic Networks. Before studying she worked as a doctor‘s assistant for nine years. She joined the Asthma and Allergy Group of Professor Erika von Mutius in Mai 2012 and is responsible for data management of the GABRIEL study.