Lab members

Søren E. Degn, PhD - Group leader, Associate Professor, DFF Research Leader, Lundbeckfonden & Carlsberg Foundation Distinguished Fellow

Søren completed his BSc (2004) and MSc (2007) in Molecular Biology at Aarhus University. During his MSc, he spent 1 year at the Departments of Biochemistry and Immunology at the University of Toronto, Canada where he worked with Professor David E. Isenman. Søren then joined the laboratory of Professors Jens Chr. Jensenius and Steffen Thiel, where he completed his PhD in Immunology (2010), on the topic of the lectin pathway of complement. His thesis work included the discovery of a novel regulatory component of this pathway, the protein MAp44 (Degn et al., Journal of Immunology, 2009). In the course of his PhD studies, Søren also worked for 1 year in the laboratory of Professor Michael C. Carroll at the Immune Disease Institute, Harvard Medical School, where he contributed to elucidating how influenza viral antigen is transported and presented in the draining lymph node in a vaccination setting (Gonzalez et al., Nature Immunology, 2010). Following award of his PhD degree, Søren continued his work on the lectin pathway of complement as a postdoctoral fellow (2011-2013) with Professors Jens Chr. Jensenius and Steffen Thiel. In a series of papers (Degn et al., Journal of Immunology, 2012; Degn et al., Journal of Immunology, 2013; Degn et al., PNAS, 2014), Søren presented a novel theory for the activation mechanism of the lectin pathway of complement. In 2013, he returned to the laboratory of Professor Michael C. Carroll, now at the Program in Cellular and Molecular Medicine (PCMM) at Boston Children’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School. During his Marie Curie Fellowship at the PCMM, Søren elucidated the clonal evolution of autoreactive germinal centers (Degn et al., Cell, 2017), and built his expertise within lymphocyte biology using in vivo models and two-photon microscopy, forming the basis of his return to Aarhus University as a Group Leader and Assistant Professor in 2017. In March 2022, he was promoted to tenured Associate Professor at the Department of Biomedicine.

Lisbeth Jensen - Lab Manager

Sofie Fonager - PhD Student

Kenneth Green - PhD Student

Kathrine Pedersen - Joint PhD Student with Steffen Thiel

Inès Mountadir - Erasmus Exchange MSc Student

Johanne Vium-Heinesen - Molecular Medicine Student

Frederikke Duch Helsinghoff - Molecular Medicine Student

Kristian Savstrup Kastberg - PhD Student

Layla Pohl - PhD Student

Johannes Skræp - MSc Student

Julia Karen Demtröder - Molecular Medicine Student

Sofie Andkær Pedersen - Medical Student

Freja Sillesen - Molecular Medicine Student

Yamira Chiara Larissa Weber - Molecular Biology Student


Ewa Terczynska-Dyla, PhD - Postdoctoral Fellow

Cecilia Fahlquist-Hagert, PhD - Postdoctoral Fellow

Laura Holst Bendix - Master's Student

Emma Herting - Medical Student

Ella Aaltonen - Medical Student

Zoe Gascon Rodríguez - Erasmus Exchange Student

Nina van Campen - Erasmus Exchange MSc Student

Alexey Ferapontov - PhD Student

Mathias Pedersen - MSc Student

Amanda Juul Howarth - MSc Student

Thomas Wittenborn, PhD - Assistant Professor

Gudrun Winther, PhD - Postdoctoral Fellow

Lasse Voss - Scientific Assistant

Amanda Jessica Campbell - Molecular Medicine Student

Annika Wattez - Medical Student

Lea Fritz - Erasmus Exchange MSc Student

Sonja Borndörfer - Erasmus Exchange Student

Karolina Machalica - Erasmus Exchange MSc Student

Camilla Wibrand - Medical Student

Maria Charlotte Konge Theilgaard - Medical Student