D-BSSE News

Every year, up to thousand candidates apply for ETH Zurich’s Excellence Scholarship and Opportunity Programme (ESOP), between 50 and 60 applicants are awarded the prestigious grant depending on the availability of funds donated to ETH Foundation. Thomas Zimmermann from Switzerland studying Computational Biology | Bioinformatics is one of the 2024 excellent scholars. An interview.

On 27 November, the Swiss Academies of Arts and Sciences awarded the National Prize for Open Research Data to the Pathoplexus project led by Tanja Stadler and her group member, Software Engineer Chaoran Chan, as well as colleagues from the Biozentrum, University of Basel, and SwissTPH. Together they established the genome sequencing database for viruses of public health relevance. Congratulations!

With more than 140 million nerve cells, the retina is a highly complex visual system, where it is challenging to treat diseases. A new study by researchers from the Biophysics group of Daniel Müller and colleagues from the Roche Pharma Research and Early Development (pRED) now present an innovative therapeutic approach. The treatment involves attaching viruses to nanoparticles, which are electromagnetically guided to deploy therapeutics exactly where they are needed.

The German Computational Biologist will advance algorithms and statistical tools for drug development in oncology. During her postdoc in the Computational Biology group of Niko Beerenwinkel, Kerstin also plans to explore ethical and societal questions related to machine learning techniques. She enjoys hiking and likes (creating and admiring) art – passions for which Basel clearly is the perfect place.

Neural organoids, tiny 3D brain-like structures, have a great potential for studying the development and diseases of the human brain. A key challenge is to relate specific brain regions or types of brain cells to organoid structures. D-BSSE researchers in partnership with scientists from Roche's Institute of Human Biology and Helmholtz Munich now present a comprehensive map of cells based on the integration of transcriptomic data across numerous methods.

On 16 November, ETH Zurich celebrated its 169th ETH Day. Upon the proposal of D-BSSE, Sven Panke, Head of the Department, presented this year’s ETH Honorary doctorate to Jason Chin, Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at the University of Cambridge. By encoding non-canonical amino acids and rewriting entire chromosomes into proteins he reimagined the biochemistry of living systems.

The Golden Owl honours lecturers distinguished by exceptional teaching and motivates them to continue with their excellent teaching. The Owl is awarded by ETH Zurich’s student association. This year, the Owl was awarded to Roman Vetter at D-BSSE, Lecturer and Senior Research Associate in the Computational Biology lab. Roman was honoured with this prestigious prize already in 2022. Big congrats, Roman!

On 9 November, upon invitation of the Bio Engineering Lab of Andreas Hierlemann and the PEL-group of ETH-Prof. em. Henry Baltes some 100 alumni, co-workers and guests met for the 8th time to talk about emerging topics in science. Since many alumni today work in industry and companies originating from D-BSSE labs, this large meeting provided an inspirational networking event for young scientists, entrepreneurs and scientists in academia alike.

Researchers around Randall Platt, Professor of Biological Engineering, have combined two gene editing methods. This enables them to quickly investigate the significance of many genetic mutations involved in the development and treatment of cancer.

On 25 November, the next public seminar organised by the ETH Zürich - Roche Partnership Next-gen Bioengineers will take place at ETH Basel premises. Dr Felix Schumacher, Programme Leader Targeted Therapeutic at Roche Pharma Research and Early Development (pRED) will talk about drug delivery to the brain. The seminar will start at 11:30am and will be live-streamed.