I am a senior researcher at the Hasso-Plattner-Institute heading the genomics, epilepsy and precision medicine (GEM) research group. I am a medical doctor and data scientist.

In our team we are working with large and small genomic and health datasets with the goal to better understand and alleviate disease. Please reach out if you are interested in learning more about ongoing scientific projects. 

PhD students: Julian Wanner, Andrea Eoli, Pia Francesca Rissom

Master students: Nicolas Walk (ITSE), Franziska Hradilak

Alumni: Jennifer Daniel Onwuchekwa, Maren Krafft, Damian Balaz (visitor from University of Tuebingen)

Academic Training

05/2019 –03/2021         Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Mark Daly lab

                                            Institute for Molecular Medicine Finland: FIMM, University of Helsinki, Finland

04/2017 – 04/2019        Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Mark Daly lab

                                            Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School/

                                            Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, Boston, USA

05/2015 – 03/2017        Clinical Genetics Residency and Postdoctoral Research Fellow

                                            Lemke/Kovacs labs

                                            University of Leipzig, Germany

08/2010 – 05/2015        Doctoral Degree (MD, Dr. med.), top grade (summa cum laude)

                                            Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology/ University of Leipzig, Germany

                                            (mentors S. Pääbo, F. Albert, T. Schöneberg)

09/2007 – 11/2014        MD degree, University of Leipzig, Germany

Selected Awards

06/2023 – 06/2026         DFG: research grant

05/2017 – 04/2019         DFG: postdoctoral research fellowships

10/2016 – 09/2017         BMBF: postdoc grant

10/2015 – 05/2017         BMBF: physician scientist fellowships

07/2009 – 11/2014         Studienstiftung des deutschen Volkes (The German National Merit Foundation): student stipend

Selected Presentations

10/2021: Invited Talk – Annual meeting of Infantile Seizure Society (hybrid, Taiwan): “Molecular Basis of Neurometabolic and Neurogenetic Diseases” & “Precision Medicine in Infantile Seizures”

08/2021: Talk (highlights plenary) – Annual meeting of European Society of Human Genetics (virtual): “Polygenic risk scores as a marker for lifetime epilepsy risk”

12/2020: Invited Talk – Annual meeting of American Epilepsy Society (virtual): “Predicting loss and gain of function of missense variants in voltage-gated calcium and sodium channels”

10/2020: Talk (opening plenary) – Annual meeting of American Society of Human Genetics (virtual): “Recessive effects of coding variants in 176,899 Finns”

07/2019: Talk – Gordon Research Conference Human Genetics and Genomics (USA): “Predicting Functional Effects of Missense Variants in Voltage-Gated Sodium and Calcium Channels”

Selected Publications

H. O. Heyne […]. M. Daly, 2023 "Mono- and biallelic variant effects on disease at biobank scale", Nature, 2023. IF 69.5.

H. O. Heyne […] M. J. Daly “Predicting Functional Effects of Missense Variants in Voltage-Gated Sodium and Calcium Channels”, Science Translational Medicine 2020, IF 17.2.

H. O. Heyne […] J. Lemke „Targeted gene sequencing in 6994 individuals with neurodevelopmental disorder with epilepsy“, Genetics in Medicine, 2019. IF 9.9

H. O. Heyne, T. Singh […] M. J. Daly, I. Helbig, D. Lal, J. Lemke „De Novo Variants In Neurodevelopmental Disorders With Epilepsy“, Nature Genetics, 2018. IF 27.1

V. Strehlow*, H. O. Heyne* […] J. Lemke „GRIN2A-related disorders: genotype and functional consequence predict phenotype“, Brain, 2018. IF 10.8 *equal contribution