News and Events Archive

Congratulations to Xiaole Wang on defending her doctoral thesis titled “Characterizing the role of extracellular matrix area and compression to early mammalian cell adhesion”! Thank you so much for your Chinese buffet-style apero - what a culinary treat! Once again, the Müller Force crafted an XL-sized hat for Xiaole.

Congratulations to Ilaria Incaviglia on defending her doctoral thesis with the title “Nanotools to Simultaneously Measure Mass and Mechanical Properties of Cellular Systems”.  Ilaria was awarded a ginormous Müller Force hat reminiscent of her recent experiments with huge cantilevers able to balance a spheroid. Thank you for inviting us to a culinary trip to Italy at your apero!

Carson Cole, Ph.D., has been awarded the ETH Zürich Postdoctoral Fellowship. He joins Prof. Dr. Daniel J. Müller’s Biophysics group at D-BSSE to develop biomimetic peptide fibrils to study fibrosis. His work aims to understand fibrotic tissue remodeling and enables innovative in vitro models for therapeutic testing. This prestigious fellowship supports independent, high-impact research for postdoctoral scholars seeking faculty positions.

Congratulations to Florian Wilhelm on the successful defense of his doctoral thesis, “Mechanistic Insights into Arrestin–GPCR Interactions: Roles of Phosphorylation and Membrane Composition”.

Thank you for the lovely apero and great job solving the puzzles hidden on your hat and cloak!

Matilde Lucioli wins BSSE microscopy image contest at the
traditional "SCF & LAF Advent Apéro".

Congratulations to Upnishad Sharma on defending your doctoral thesis titled “Mechanobiology of αV-class Integrin-Mediated Adhesion Initiation in Fibroblasts”! Thank you for the flavoursome apero and the celebration afterwards. The Müller Force is ever so grateful for your outstanding contributions to our group!

In his latest publication, Krishna characterized how cortical neurons sense and respond to various mechanical stimuli. The cover image of Krishna’s work depicts a colored scanning electron microscopy (SEM) image of a network of cortical neurons grown on a microelectrode array used for combined force and electrophysiological measurements.

How cells modulate their adhesion to the extracellular matrix (ECM) and to neighboring cells during mitotic cell rounding remained elusive. We recently deciphered that cell-ECM adhesion components are released prior to mitosis and are rewired to synergize with cadherins to strengthen adhesion to adjacent cells.

So far, it has remained elusive how cells initially sense and respond to fibrillar extracellular matrices during adhesion initiation and how this initial sensing continuously influences cell behavior. In our recent paper published in Advanced Science, we engineered biomimetic fibrillar fibronectin matrices using 3D-printed microgrids and simple solution shearing.

Until recently, it was assumed that cells simply burst and die at the end of their life. Now, a team of researches at the Biozentrum, University of Basel, the University of Lausanne and our group (Stefania Mari and group alumna Kristyna Pluhackova) have provided new insights into the final step of cell death.