Dr. Büşra Külekci

Büşra received her PhD from the Medical University of Vienna, where she studied the diversity, dynamics, and evolution of human cytomegalovirus (HCMV) in clinical settings, particularly transplant recipients. Her research combines molecular virology and bioinformatics to characterise viral populations, uncover mixed-strain infections, and understand donor and recipient contributions to post-transplant infections. She develops and applies advanced sequencing and computational workflows to track viral populations in clinical samples. As part of the Cluster of Excellence: Microbiomes Drive Planetary Health, she now extends her work to the human gut virome, exploring how viral communities influence microbiome function and host health, with a focus on fecal microbiota transplantation recipients.

• Viral genomics and evolution of human viruses
• Bioinformatic and experimental approaches to analyse mixed viral populations and metagenomic data
• Persistence and dynamics of viral populations within hosts
• Virus–host and microbiome interactions, with a focus on the virome across different microbiome environments