Andrea Cipriano

Germ cells, preimplantation embryos and pluripotent stem cells at first glance seem to have nothing in common. A more careful look, though, reveals that they are very closely linked to each other. The zygote originates from the fusion of two highly specialized germ cells (the sperm and the oocyte) and in a few days develops into a blastocyst with a pluripotent cell population (the inner cell mass). These cells diverge from the extraembryonic cells of the trophoectoderm and can give rise to embryonic stem cells, in which a perpetual pluripotent and undifferentiated state is maintained.

Buzz Baum

The wider aims of our research are to better understand the evolution of eukaryotic cell shape and division, to determine how cells regulate their form, and to determine how these processes contribute to normal tissue development and homeostasis and, when they go awry, to the evolution of metastatic cancer.

Clarice D. Aiello

Clarice D. Aiello is a quantum engineer interested in how quantum physics informs biology at the nanoscale. She is an expert on nanosensors harnessing room-temperature quantum effects in noisy environments. After obtaining her PhD from MIT, she completed postdoctoral training at Stanford and UC Berkeley.

Prof. Denis Walsh

I am a philosopher of biology in the Department of Philosophy, Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, and the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. My main research interests revolve around the interpretation of evolutionary theory, and the nature of scientific explanation. Perhaps uniquely among the natural sciences, biology deploys causal, statistical and teleological explanations. My work explores the nature of these explanations and the relation between them. I further investigate the nature of living things, and their place in evolutionary biology. I spent the academic year (2018-2019) as a fellow at the Institut d’ Études Avancées, in Paris. My project there was entitled ‘Agency in the Natural World’. It now constitutes my principal line of research. I am currently co-PI on a collaborative project with evolutionary biologists entitled Agency in Living Systems, and a member of the Leadership Team of the Schwartz Reisman Institute for Technology and Society at the University of Toronto.

Edoardo Calizza

Edoardo Calizza is currently a Researcher and Adjunct Professor of Ecology at the Department of Environmental Biology, Sapienza University of Rome. After graduating in Ecobiology from the Sapienza University of Rome, he obtained his PhD in 2014, again from the Sapienza University, with a dissertation titled “Biodiversity organisation and disturbance in detritus-based systems.”

Prof. Elizabeth Murchison

Elizabeth Murchison is Professor of Comparative Oncology and Genetics at the University of Cambridge, Department of Veterinary Medicine. She leads the Transmissible Cancer Group, working to further understand transmissible cancers in dogs and Tasmanian devils.

Elizabeth grew up in Tasmania and performed her undergraduate studies in genetics and biochemistry at the University of Melbourne. After moving to the US to perform her PhD in molecular biology and genetics at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, Elizabeth returned to Australia where she initiated genetic studies of the Tasmanian devil facial tumour 1 (DFT1). In 2009, she was awarded an NHMRC Overseas Biomedical Fellowship to travel to the Wellcome Sanger Institute, UK, where she was involved in sequencing the Tasmanian devil genome as well as genetic analysis of DFT1 and CTVT. Elizabeth joined the University of Cambridge, Department of Veterinary Medicine in 2013. In her spare time, Elizabeth enjoys hiking in Tasmania’s remote wilderness.

Fyodor Kondrashov

Kondrashov and his group do not restrict themselves to studying specific functions or phenotypes, instead, a staple feature of their research is a focus on how functions and phenotypes change over time. Therefore, their research is inherently interdisciplinary, grounded in classical evolutionary fields of population genetics and molecular evolution while drawing from other fields, such as cell and molecular biology, bioinformatics, and biophysics. Recently, the group has become increasingly interested in the experimental assay of fitness landscapes. Combining experiments, theory, and computational biology, they query how changes in the genotype affect fitness or specific phenotypes. In the near future, they hope to expand their experimental capabilities in order to query a wider range of interesting phenotypes in a high-throughput manner.

Gerhard Hummer

Gerhard Hummer is the director of the department of Theoretical Biophysics at the Max Planck institute of Biophysics. Their goal is to develop detailed and quantitative descriptions of key biomolecular processes, including energy conversion, molecular transport, signal transduction, and enzymatic catalysis. After completing his PhD in the university of Vienna, Gerhard pursued a postdoc at los Almos National Laboratory, USA.

Ikram Blilou

Professor Blilou’ s research focuses on how plant cells communicate to transfer positional information and to instruct specific functions during pattern formation. This involves studying regulatory networks that control protein movement and asymmetric cell division in plant roots, by mapping protein complexes in vivo at the cellular resolution, and by unraveling how their distinct spatial distribution leads to specific gene expression and proper cell fate acquisition.

Jan Philipp Junker

Philipp Junker is a research group leader at the Max Delbrueck Center in Berlin. He received his PhD in biophysics from Technische Universitaet Muenchen. In his postdoctoral work in Alexander van Oudenaarden’s group, he investigated gene regulatory mechanisms of robustness in developmental patterning, and he developed the tomo-seq method for spatially resolved transcriptomics in 3D. Using the zebrafish as their primary model system, his group develops new methods for inclusion of spatiotemporal information in single-cell genomics, and the lab applies these technologies to understand cell fate decisions in embryonic development and during organ regeneration. Philipp Junker obtained ERC Starting and Consolidators Grants, received the Minerva ARCHES award for German-Israeli collaboration, and was selected as an EMBO Young Investigator.

Jean Fan

Jean Fan is a member of the faculty of Biomedical Engineering in the Center for Computational Biology at Johns Hopkins University. Her research team, the JEFworks lab, is interested in understanding the molecular and spatial-contextual factors shaping cellular identity and heterogeneity, particularly in the context of cancer and how this heterogeneity impacts tumor progression, therapeutic resistance, and ultimately clinical prognosis. She develops new open-source computational software for analyzing single-cell multi-omic and imaging data that can be tailored and applied to diverse cancer types and biological systems. Dr. Fan is also the founder, director, and lead software developer for the non-profit organization CuSTEMized, which provides personalized STEM picture storybooks to encourage young girls to see themselves as scientists.

Dr. Fan was previously an NCI F99/K00 post-doctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. Xiaowei Zhuang at Harvard University where she developed computational methods for analyzing spatially resolved transcriptomics data and applied MERFISH to characterize cellular and subcellular heterogeneity. She received her PhD in Bioinformatics and Integrative Genomics at Harvard under the mentorship of Dr. Peter Kharchenko at the Department of Biomedical Informatics and in close collaboration with Dr. Catherine Wu at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute where she developed computational methods for analyzing single-cell omics data to better understand the disease pathogenesis and progression of chronic lymphocytic leukemia. The impact of Dr. Fan’s work has been recognized by several awards and honors, including the Forbes 30 Under 30, the Nature Research Award for Inspiring Science, and the NSF CAREER Award.

Paul Guichard

The lab focuses on deciphering the structural mechanisms governing centriole assembly. To this end, we are combining the use of cell biology methods, in vitro reconstitution assays, cryo-microscopy / cryo-tomography and super-resolution microscopy to gain decisive insights into these mechanisms.

Prisca Liberali

Robust experimental model systems have recently been developed from adult or induced pluripotent stem cells that self-organise into organoid structures in vitro. In particular, intestinal organoids recapitulate most of the spatial and temporal processes of morphogenesis and patterning observed in the intestinal tissue. Starting from a single cell, they provide a unique experimental system in which every cell is fully tractable. This system also allows systematic perturbation by established gene perturbation methods. Our laboratory aims to understand the collective properties of these multi-cellular systems and their patterns, including how such properties arise from single-cell behaviour and organisation. Moreover, we develop and apply experimental and theoretical frameworks for the study of cellular heterogeneity during collective cell behaviour. We use high-content genetic perturbation screens and live-cell imaging with single-cell resolution, combined with advanced quantitative imaging, single cell genomics, and modelling of stem cells.

Sandra Smit

Sandra Smit is an assistant professor in the Bioinformatics Group at Wageningen University (The Netherlands). Her research team develops and applies computational tools for comparative (pan)genomics, aiming to harness the full spectrum of genomic variation in large sets of genomes. They developed the software package PanTools, for the construction and (visual) analysis of complex pangenome graphs. It can be applied across the tree of life. Sandra was trained as a computer scientist and, after four years at the University of Colorado, obtained her PhD in bioinformatics at the VU university in Amsterdam. She then moved to Wageningen University, working on comparative genomics in many agricultural organisms.

Tanmay Bharat

Our laboratory uses electron tomography, combined with several structural and cell biology techniques, to study cell surfaces of prokaryotes at the atomic level. Surface molecules mediate cellular interactions with the environment and play important roles in key processes including cell adhesion, biofilm formation and antibiotic tolerance in pathogenic bacteria.

Tobias Erb

Metabolism is one of the key features of living systems. In our everyday life we experience it in different forms: Plants, algae and many microorganism perform photosynthesis and convert carbon dioxide into carbohydrates. Other organisms (including us humans) consume the fixed carbon to cover their energetic needs, which closes the global cycle of carbon.

From a scientific point of view, metabolism can be defined as the dynamic biochemistry of life that provides cells with the energy and the building blocks required for their three- and four-dimensional self-organization.

In our lab, we aim at understanding and applying the fundamental design principles of metabolism. On the one hand, we study the function and organization of natural metabolism in the context of the living cell. On the other hand, we use our understanding to build novel, synthetic metabolism in a bottom-up fashion.