Franziska S. Hanschen, born in 1985, has been research group leader at the Leibniz Institute for Vegetable and Ornamental Crops (IGZ) in Großbeeren, Germany, since 2018. After her studies in food chemistry and her doctoral studies at the Technische Universität Berlin in 2012 she went to the IGZ to continue her research. In the following years she worked at several German or international research institutes (2013: Freiburg University Medical Centre; 2015 and 2016: Wageningen University and Research, The Netherlands; 2017: NZ Institute for Plant & Food Research, New Zealand). In 2020 she qualified as a professor at the University of Hamburg in food chemistry and was awarded the “Werner-Baltes-Preis des Jungen Wissenschaftlers” by the Lebensmittelchemische Gesellschaft. 

Leitmotif

If you never try, you’ll never know.

Activities

Since 2019, Franziska Hanschen has been deputy chair of the Regionalverband Nordost of the Lebensmittelchemische Gesellschaft (LChG) section of Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (GDCh) and member of the organization and the scientific committee of the annual conferences of the Regionalverband Nordost. She was also member of the organization and the scientific committee of the “4th International Glucosinolate Conference”.

Awards

In 2015, Franziska Hanschen received the “Josef-Schormüller-Stipendium” of the Josef-Schormüller-Gedächtnisstiftung. In 2020, she was awarded the “Werner-Baltes-Preis des Jungen Wissenschaftlers” of the Lebensmittelchemische Gesellschaft.

Focus

In her research, Franziska Hanschen investigates the formation and reactions of sulfur-containing secondary plant compounds such as glucosinolates and S-alk(en)yl-L-cysteine sulfoxides. Her focus is on the regulation of enzymatic degradation pathways in plants, how food preparation influences enzymatic and non-enzymatic reaction pathways and on investigating the effect on humans.

Methods

• Chromatographic methods (GC-MS, LC-DAD/FLD-MS)
• Mass spectrometry
• NMR
• Molecular biological approaches, proteomics