I studied molecular biology and biochemistry and continued with virology at the Charles University in Prague. I got fascinated by diseases and medicine after reading a book about ‘viruses in the 21st century’ written by my mentor and former supervisor. I worked on the characterization of Zika and Dengue proteases and their inhibition in the laboratory of Jan Konvalinka at IOCB in Prague. I also spent 7 months at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden in the laboratory of Nico Dantuma working on the inhibition of the ubiquitin-proteasome system. I completely changed my field of research when I moved to Berlin, starting my PhD project in Ilaria Piazza's laboratory, focusing on allosteric proteomics and metabolic regulation of chromatin.