My name is Krisztina Szalai. I work as a researcher at the Institute of Pathophysiology (Medical University of Vienna). My focus is on allergy research - development of new therapy for asthma and atopic dermatitis. In the picture I sent you, I`m sensitising Balb/c mice via the skin to induce atopic dermatitis and then we apply the therapy for these animals.

This laboratory was designed and equipped with great help from our first group members Silvia Bou and Domnita Fratila. The photo brings back nice memories of the creation, establishment and the first successful achievements of our microhandling group.

Here are two pictures - one of my lab, and the other of my office. I chose these because they are what things really look like - and because these are the places where ideas are born and developed. Our work is focused primarily on understanding the underlying causes of mutations - this is of central importance to cancer, since cancer is caused by the accumulation of mutations in aberrant cells. We think a lot about what it is that makes some people more at risk of cancer than others, and we are particularly interested in developing better ways to figure out which things in our environment really are the biggest health hazards. We are passionate about two things: understanding biology (a fascinating and elegant world full of surprises and delight) and applying knowledge to improve the human condition.

brainSpace

Field of research: knowledge generation as a cause and consequence of space production "between synapse and concentration" 

www.marinamather.com

The office photo contains some very important elements of my work: the door of my office open to my colleagues most of the time, the coffee machine used here more than at home, the colourful announcements of conferences and teaching activities and the never melting pile of paper on the table, waiting to be read, processed, discussed, written or reviewed. The other photo shows the facilities where we grow our experimental plants, called Arabidopsis thaliana, a small weed but a great prototype for plants in general.