Our Group

Group Leader
Gerd Meyer zu Hörste
Prof. Gerd Meyer zu Hörste, MD is an Attending Neurologist at the Department of Neurology at the University Clinic Münster and Heisenberg Professor at the University of Münster. The overarching theme of his research is to understand the relationship between the nervous system and the immune system in health and disease with a special focus on brain borders and utilizing advanced transcriptomics.
gerd.mzh(at)uni-muenster(dot)de
Post-Docs
Martin Häring
Martin Häring studied biology at the University of Mainz and did his doctorate in Prof. Lutz's group on the cannabinoid system in various neuron populations. He then worked as a postdoc under the supervision of Patrik Ernfors at the Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, focusing on single cell analysis in the dorsal spinal cord and other centres of the somatosensory system. He joined the MzH lab in 2021. His work focuses on in age-related degenerative and inflammatory diseases of the nervous system.
martin.haering(at)ukmuenster(dot)de
Michael Heming
Michael Heming, MD is a clinical scientist focusing on neuroimmunology, single cell transcriptomics and data analysis. He is also a resident Neurologist in the Department of Neurology of the University Hospital Münster.
michaeloleg.heming(at)ukmuenster(dot)de
I-Na Lu
I-Na Lu, PhD is a research scientist interested in immunology and next generation sequencing. She is in charge of the single cell sequencing platform of the lab, which aims at creating a profiling data repository with cellular and molecular analyses from patients with neuroimmunological disorders.
i-na.lu(at)ukmuenster(dot)de
Louisa Müller-Miny
Louisa Müller-Miny, MD is resident at the Department of Neurology with Institute of Translational Neurology with a special interest in spontaneous and treatment-related autoimmunity of the nervous system across neuro-oncology and neuro-immunology.
louisa.mueller-miny(at)ukmuenster(dot)de
David Schafflick
David Schafflick received his M.Sc. in Biotechnology from Carolo-Wilhelmina University in Braunschweig in 2016. He joined the lab in May 2016 and received his PhD from the University of Münster in 2022. His interests are the interaction between antigen-presenting B cells and T cells especially in the cerebrospinal fluid and in the dura layer of the meninges. In addition, he studies in the nervous system and is the operator of the group's fluorescence activated cell sorting tasks.
david.schafflick(at)ukmuenster(dot)de
PhD students
Anna-Lena Börsch
Anna-Lena Börsch received her M.Sc. in Molecular Biomedicine from he University of Münster in 2022. She joined the lab as a student helper and subsequently focused her bachelor thesis in 2019 on immune cell infiltrations in EAE. She joined the MzH-group for her PhD in 2022 and is especially interested in cell trafficking in the meninges during health and disease. In addition, she supports the research group with illustrations for publications.
anna-lena.boersch(at)ukmuenster(dot)de
Timm Kühnel

Timm Kühnel received his M.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Münster in February 2022, with a focus on Computer Vision, Pattern Recognition and Machine Learning. He joined the MzH lab in March 2022 as a research associate with an option for a doctorate. His scientific interests are integration of single cell/nuclei data with spatial transcriptomics, machine learning and pattern recognition and more widely computer-aided advancement of medicine.
t.kuehnel(at)ukmuenster(dot)de
Sheng-Hsiang Shen
Sheng-Hsiang Shen received his M.Sc. in Medical Life Sciences from Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel in 2018. He is interested in neuroimmunology with a focus on meningeal immunity. In 2021, he joined the MzH lab and works on brain border tissues beyond the meninges.
sheng-hsiang.shen(at)ukmuenster(dot)de
Technical Assistants
Julia Tietz
Julia Tietz completed her training as a biological-technical assistant at the Berufskolleg Olsberg. From 2006-2016 she worked for WWU at the Institute of Molecular Microbiology and Biotechnology. Then from 2016-2021 in an independent microbiology laboratory. She joined the Meyer zu Hörste research group in 2021. She supports the research group in sample processing and in method establishment for single cell RNA sequencing and other sequencing-related technologies.
julia.tietz(at)ukmuenster(dot)de
Student Assistants
Maja Meschnark
Sophie Linnenbaum
Fenja Hornung
Alumni
Previous Lab Members
2016 - 2018 Tobias Lautwein, PhD
2017 - 2021 Maike Hartlehnert, PhD
2017 – 2024 Jolien Wolbert, PhD
2022 – 2024 Pauline Laufer, MSc
2020 – 2023 Svea Haessner, MD