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About

— a quick hello
Melike Dönertaş

I’m a research group leader at the Leibniz Institute on Aging (FLI) — computational biology, aging and age-related diseases.

Other things these days:

  • Learning German
  • Starting A Little History of Science; listening to 36 Books That Changed the World on Audible (bookshelf)
  • Writing code as a hobby (small tools, small websites)

Why I write here #

To learn. And to share what I learn.

About fifteen years ago my first blog was called compbio scratchpad — back then I wrote about my own process of learning computational biology. It turned out to help friends around me, and beyond that, trying to explain something in my own words helped me too. A win-win — and it still makes me happy.

This blog won’t stay strictly within computational biology anymore. I want to share what I learn and think about life too — in scratchpad mode. Not polished ideas and claims like I’m writing a book; the environment I want is one where I’m genuinely thinking aloud, sharing the process of thinking itself. Because that same process is what helps me shape my own thinking.

Short bio #

I’m a computational biologist running my own research group at the Leibniz Institute on Aging (FLI) in Jena. We work on understanding aging, measuring it, and slowing it down — leaning heavily on AI and computational methods. Group page: donertas-group.github.io.

I might write the story behind some of these turning points as a separate post later.

2005 – 09
High School Bursa Anadolu Erkek Lisesi
2009 – 14
BSc METU Molecular Biology and Genetics
2014 – 16
MSc METU Biological Sciences
2016 – 20
PhD University of Cambridge / EMBL-EBI — Bioinformatics
2021
Postdoc Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing
2022
Postdoc Leibniz Institute on Aging (FLI), Jena
2023 —
Group Leader Leibniz Institute on Aging (FLI), Jena