Dr. Anja Worrich
Department of Applied Microbial Ecology

Working Group Environmental Antimicrobial Resistance

anja.worrich@ufz.de

Phone +49 341 235 482295

Permoserstraße 15 | 04318 Leipzig | Germany

Congratulations to Debjyoti on successfully defending his PhD thesis!  

We are happy to welcome Sarvesh Anandas to our group! He has joined the Senftenberg branch of the group and will be working on the ANTIRESIST project. Over the next three years, he will investigate antibiotic degradation at the soil-plant interface.

Franzi presented a poster at the 8^th Environmental Dimensions of Antimicrobial Resistance (EDAR8) conference in Brisbane.

We warmly welcome Shankar Saligrama Ravish to our group! He studies Biotechnology at BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg and is supervised by Luis. In his Master's thesis, he examines how two farming systems, with and without manure, differ in their potential to carry ARGs and how these genes are mobilized by genetic mobile elements.

Mary attended the Viruses of Microbes (VoM) conference in Prague with a poster presentation.

Lieke and Luis attended the annual meeting of the SmartManure project.

Chika presented a poster at the ASM Microbe conference in Washington, D.C.

Haining presented a poster at the 23^rd World Congress of Soil Science (WCSS) in Nanjing, China.

Luis, Mara and Franzi presented posters at the European Geoscience Unioin (EGU) in Vienna.

We're excited to announce that our working group is now on LinkedIn! Follow us to get insights into our work. 

Congratulations to Haining and Debjyoti, who published a joined paper in ISME communications!   

We are very happy to welcome Tabea Langner to our group! She studies Molecular Biology and Biotechnology at Technische Universität Dresden and is supervised by Debjyoti. In her Bachelor's thesis, she is looking at metabolic shifts within extracellular vesicles extracted from soil subjected to stress using metaproteomics.

We warmly welcome Lilly Bretschger as new bachelor student to our group! She is a Biology student at Universität Leipzig and will be working with Franzi. For her thesis, Lilly is conducting a soil microcosm experiment involving the application of the antibiotic sulfadiazine to evaluate its biotransformation, the proliferation of antibiotic resistance genes and its impact on the bacterial metabolic activity.

We are happy to welcome Josephine Speer to our group! She is a Biotechnology student at Hochschule Mittweida and will be working alongside Haining. Her Bachelor's thesis research will focus on 'Bacterial extracellular vesicles-mediated horizontal gene transfer of antimicrobial resistance'.

Luis attended the 23^rd Assembly of Biodiversity Exploratories in Wernigerode.

Chika followed Anja to BTU Cottbus and inaugurated the new labs in Senftenberg!

We are sad to announce that Wenxuan is leaving our group. Having joined us as a CSC student, she is returning to China to complete her PhD. We enjoyed having her in the group and wish her all the best for the future!

We had a lovely Christmas party with good food, quizzes, games, and a walk around the Christmas market. We wish everyone a happy holiday season and a good start to 2026!

We are pleased to welcome Berthold Kösling to the group! He will be supporting Mary and Franzi's projects as a student research assistant.

We had to say goodbye to Jiaojiao, who is returning to China to complete her PhD. It was great having her in the team, and we wish her all the best!

Jiaojiao's paper was published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials. Congratulations!

Haining, Debjyoti, and Jiaojiao attended a workshop in Dresden on “Making Environmental AMR Surveillance Fit for Purpose: Data Integration and the Ecology of Resistance”.

Lieke and Franzi presented a talk and a poster at the Jena Environmental Interfaces Symposium.

Wenxuan's paper was published in ES&T Engineering. Congratulations!

Luis attended the 9th iDiv Annual Conference in Halle and presented a poster at the International One Health Symposium in Berlin.

We are very sad to say goodbye to Salome, but we wish her all the best in her future endeavours!

The group had a great two-day workshop with Christian Wirrwitz to reflect on the past and discuss how to manage Anja’s transition to BTU.

We are happy to welcome Anom Candra as a new intern in our group! She will assist Franzi with her greenhouse experiment, which focuses on the impact of antibiotics and their biotransformation in soil-plant systems. 

We had a lot of fun at our group's barbecue, with lots of great games organised by Lieke to help us get to know each other even better!

Anja has accepted a tenure-track junior professorship at BTU Cottbus–Senftenberg, starting November 2025. The team members will continue their projects at UFZ. 

Lieke took part in the Ecology of Soil Microorganisms conference (ESM) in Helsinki and presented her work on the limitation of antibiotic resistance spread in agricultural soil micrombes through cover crops. 

We warmly welcome Shrijita Das to our group! She is doing her Master's Thesis with Mary working on the isolation of bacteria and their phages from soil.

We enjoyed a wonderful group activity with potluck and games! 

We welcome Vanda as a new bachelor student to our group! She will be working with Lieke on antibiotic resistance genes in agricultural soils planted with cover crops after manure application.

We had a lot of fun during our group activity! We made a nice podluck with games and went bowling afterwards. 

We warmly welcome our new postdoctoral researcher Mary Eliza to the group! She holds a PhD in Soil Evolutionary Microbiology from the University of Sheffield, where she focused on harnessing soil microbiomes for sustainable agriculture. She will be working in the ANTIRESIST project.

We are happy to welcome our new postdoctoral researcher Debjyoti Ghosh! In his PhD he worked on soil metaproteomics in the context of agricultural management. He is now bringing his expertise to several ongoing projects, focusing on the functional characterization of bacterial communities in soil-plant systems.

We are happy to announce that we are looking for a new student to work with Lieke in the SmartManure college. If you are interested in doing an internship, bachelor or master thesis on this topic, have a look here.

We had our group Christmas party involving a lot of quizzes and nice food! We wish everyone merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

We welcome Dr. Luis Daniel Prada Salcedo as a new postdoctoral researcher to our group! He is involved in the pilot project ResistChange and investigates the impact of climate change on the spread of antibiotic resistance from livestock manure to soils under various agricultural management practices.

Maja, Chika and Franzi participated in a workshop for our new digital PCR from QIAGEN.

Haining and Chika presented posters at the 3rd IP Day of the Integration Platform 4 'Tapping nature's potential for sustainable production and a healthy environment'.

Welcome to Franziska Raab, a new PhD student in our group! As a part of the project ANTIRESIST, she will work on the effects of antibiotics on the bacterial metabolic activity in soil-plant systems.

Welcome Jiaojiao Xu to the group! She is an exchange PhD student from South China Agricultural University working on conjugative transfer of ARGs among bacterial communities of swine manure.

Chika and Haining presented posters at the International One Health Symposium Berlin.

We welcome two new students to our group. Melanie Konrad (BTU Cottbus-Senftenberg) will do her internship with Chika and Lukas Niemöller (Universität Leipzig) will do his bachelor thesis with Lieke.

We welcome Salome Schneider as a new apprentice in our group. She will support the different projects in our group and will be mainly supervised by Maja.

Welcome to the group Lieke! Lieke Lipsch is part of the SmartManure PhD college and will spend the next three years investigating whether cover crops can mitigate the negative environmental impacts of manure application on agricultural soils. 

We are very happy to welcome Haining Huang as a new PhD student in the group! Haining will be working on extracellular vesicles in soils and their role in the spread of antibiotic resistance in the soil microbiome.

Wenxuan Chen joined the group as a visiting PhD student. She will be working on the development of QSAR models for the prediction of antibiotic rejection by membranes. Nice to have you on board!

Dr. Chika Ejikeugwu joined our group via a Humboldt Fellowship for experienced researchers. Chika will work on the effects of antibiotic mixtures in soils. Welcome!

After one year with us, we say goodbye to Xin Wen, who is going back to South China Agricultural University after her stay as a guest PhD in our group. Thank you Xin for the good time and good luck on your further way! We also look forward to continuing our collaboration in the future.

Hendrik Seifert will now continue the work he did during his internship in the FULLREMOVAL project as a master student under the supervision of Fátima. Welcome back Hendrik!

New review paper out in Environmental Microbiology. From gut to mud: dissemination of antimicrobial resistance between animal and agricultural niches

Click here for open access version

We warmly welcome Fátima as a new postdoc to the group. Fátima will be working on her MSCA-funded project FULLREMOVAL for the next two years. 

Kristina Scholz is joining the working group as an intern for the next three months. Welcome Kristina!

Hanna's bachelor thesis will investigate the mechanisms of antibiotic resistance persistence in soils.

Good luck!

Since February, Maja Hinkel is supporting the working group as a technical assistant. She will develop and apply protocols to determine hosts of antibiotic resistance genes in soil. Welcome Maja!

Johanna Zech will do an internship with us until the end of February. She will investigate how soil biophysical conditions affect the invasion success of antibiotic-resistant bacteria. 

Our BELL student Johanna Rasch participated very successfully in the regional Jugend forscht contest. She took the first place in the biology category and also received the Carl-Friedrich-Gauß-Award.

Congratulations Johanna!

The MDR series "Mission: Saving the world" featured our work on antibiotics in soils.