Meet the Ulrich lab
Kathrin Ulrich
Principal Investigator
Kathrin received her PhD in 2017 at Heidelberg University where she worked on oxidative protein modifications in African trypanosomes. As a postdoc, she joined the lab of Ursula Jakob at the University of Michigan to study redox-regulated chaperones and their roles in cell stress responses. In Oct 2022, she became Juniorprofessor for Cellular Biochemistry at the Institute of Biochemistry at the University of Cologne working on redox regulation of chaperones and proteostasis. In Oct 2025, she joined Saarland University as Professor for Molecular and Cellular Biology.
kathrin.ulrich@uni-saarland.de
+49 (0)681-302-4713
Lara Knaup
PhD student
Lara completed her MS at the Institute of Medical Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Greifswald in Apr 2023 and has started her PhD in Jun2023. She is investigating the cellular redox regualtion of the stress-sensing chaperone Get3 and focuses on the interactome to unravel client binding and the interaction with the cellular proteostasis network.
lknaup@uni-koeln.de
Shayan Motiei
PhD student
Shayan conducted his master's thesis at the Institute of Biochemistry, University of Cologne, where he studied subunits of the respiratory chain complex I as sensors for oxidative damage in the mitochondrial matrix. In December 2023, he joined the Ulrich lab and began his PhD journey. He is investigating the role of a redox-regulated chaperone, ASNA-1, in the nematode worm C. elegans. The primary focus of his project is to elucidate the role of ASNA-1 as a hub connecting redox and protein homeostasis during aging and under stress conditions.
smotiei@smail.uni-koeln.de
Katharina Utschakowski
Phd student
Katharina studied the Master Biochemistry and Molecular Medicine at the University of Cologne and did her Master thesis in the Ulrich lab studying the so far unknown stress-induced chaperone function of a mitochondrial protein. While she initially worked on the structural and functional characterization of the protein in vitro, she focuses now on the cellular impact of the protein on mitochondrial proteostasis and cell viability.