dr. Morgan Essex

Morgan joined in 2025 as a project leader, having been an MSc student and PhD collaborator of the group since 2018. She completed her doctoral research with Sofia Forslund at the Charité Hospital Berlin in 2024, focusing on hypothesis generation, robust statistical methods for (confounded) clinical microbiome studies, and immune-mediated disease. Before that, she studied engineering and pharmaceutical sciences at Purdue University and systems biology at Heidelberg University. Her scientific interest in studying the microbial world within began with a personal health and nutrition journey.

Morgan’s primary role in the group is research and administrative support. To help the group run smoothly, she will help supervise and coordinate PhD projects, pitch in with statistical analyses and publications, and organize group knowledge and resources. Morgan’s PhD research dove into the statistics of disease association studies and confounders in microbiome data, interests that began in the Zeller group and remain part of its core expertise. She is passionate about scientific communication and policy, open science, and the power of interdisciplinary collaboration to translate knowledge into impact.

Links:

 Github

 LinkedIn