Gesa Junge

Gesa grew up in Hamburg, Germany before moving to the UK in 2008 to go to college and study Pharmacology at Newcastle University. College then turned into graduate school, and she stayed in Newcastle to study how DNA repair mechanisms can be targeted in cancer cells to improve leukaemia therapies. After she received her PhD from the Northern Institute for Cancer Research in Newcastle, Gesa moved countries again and came to New York to begin a postdoc at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centre. Here, she stayed in the field of DNA repair, but her research focus shifted from pharmacology and studying drug candidates to molecular biology and studying how the various DNA repair pathways in the cell interact.
Gesa has always been interested in science communication. Science is for everyone and you should not have to study it to see how cool and useful it can be. She helped set up a science magazine called {react} while in graduate school in Newcastle, and volunteered for Cancer Research UK outreach events, running lab tours, demonstrating lab equipment to visitors, and building cells from playdoh. In New York, she got involved with the Memorial Sloan Kettering Postdoc Association and it’s newly set up science outreach team which works with local schools to make science class more fun. Gesa is also working with Taste of Science, an annual festival which brings scientists into bars to talk about their research. Recently, she hung up her lab coat to switch careers from the lab to intellectual property and patent law. Gesa can still be found at science outreach events around NYC and will never stop being amazed by the cool new things being discovered by scientists around the world.