prof. dr. T.E.F. (Tessa) Quax

Tessa studied Biology at the University of Utrecht, where she obtained her BSc (2007) and MSc (2009) with distinction. She performed her PhD training in a joint project in the group of Prof. Dr. John van der Oost at Wageningen University and in the group of Dr. Prangishvili at the Institut Pasteur in Paris. She obtained her PhD degree in 2013 for her work on archaeal virus-host interactions. Next, she obtained a Pegasus-Marie-Curie fellowship to do a post-doc in the lab of Prof. Dr. Rob Lavigne at Leuven University (2014). Supported by an EMBO long term fellowship and a Marie-Curie post-doctoral fellowship, in 2015 she moved to the University of Freiburg for a post-doc on archaeal chemotaxis and motility in the group of Prof. Dr. Sonja-Verena Albers. In 2018 she received a Maragete von Wrangell independence grant in order to start her own research line on viruses of haloarchaea at the University of Freiburg. This was followed by an Emmy Noether grant from the German Science Foundation (DFG) to expand her line of research in Freiburg. In 2021 Tessa was appointed as associate professor at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands. Here she obtained an ERC starting grant (2022) and a Vidi grant from the Dutch Research Council NWO (2023) to built up her group on Biology of Archaea and Viruses. Her work has received several prizes such as a Hector RCD Award from the Hector Fellow Academy, the Beijerinck premium from the Royal Netherlands Society for Arts and Sciences (KNAW) and the KNAW Early Career award. She is currently coordinating several international networks such as a Marie Curie Doctoral Network with 10 European partners and an Human Frontiers in Science Program consortium with partners from 4 different continents.

An extensive cv can be found here.