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Sophie Herzog from the group of Daniel Müller qualified for the prestigious 2018 Ironman World Championship at Nelson Mandela Bay, South Africa, among 130 000 athletes. The race will take place on 1 and 2 September 2018. The D-BSSE keeps crossing fingers and wishes Sophie a fantastic championship!

In Europe, an estimated 25 000 deaths per year can be attributed to resistant pathogens. Classic antibiotic therapies are increasingly ineffective. Time to think about completely new concepts. This is what D-BSSE professor Martin Fussenegger does: he wants to tackle the pathogens with designer cells. Read about his reasearch in the Inhouse magazine of the Biozentrum.

Periklis (Laki) Pantazis, former head of the research group Nano Bio Imaging at D-BSSE, left Basel in July 2018 to start his new position as Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) at the Department of Bioengineering at Imperial College London. He had joined ETH Zurich as Assistant Professor in November 2011 after a 5-year period as a postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), USA. Laki, your D-BSSE colleagues and friends wish you all the very best for the future!

Cryo-electron microscopy is one of the pioneering examination methods in biomedical research. Thanks to generous donations from four partners, ETH is now able to develop further in this area. The donations enable the acquisition of a second device and the development of a new professorship.

Zühlke helps startups to identify, develop and test new ideas. Apply before 30 September to get expert advice on how to further innovate your product and successfully develop it beyond the concept or prototype stage. At the end of the session you will walk away with a plan that will help boost your way to successful production.

On 24 July, after an intensive week of developing a solid business plan, Arne Wehling, a doctoral student in the Cell Systems Dynamics Group headed by Professor Timm Schroeder, and his international team of graduate students convinced the jury of his idea to turn PET into a valuable resource. The jury consisted of Merck professionals, academics and international investors.

D-BSSE Staff members are invited to sign up for the German language classes that will be held every Monday and Wednesday, 6-7 PM, starting on 24 September. The classes were organised by the D-BSSE Scientific Staff Association.

On 5 September, Dr. Emily Leproust, CEO, co-founder and director of Twist Bioscience, will talk about their innovative way to disrupt the process of gene synthesis to enable the exponential growth of synthetic biology applications in multiple fields including medicine, DNA data storage, agricultural biology and industrial chemicals. Register via the website of D-BSSE Meets Industry.

Why does a cell all of a sudden gets out of control and starts to divide until it reaches the size of a large tumour? The exact mechanism is not yet clear. A recent study published in Nature Communications gives hope: a regulatory cascade triggered by a hormone might play a key role in the targeted destruction of tumour cells. The study was conducted by Yanrui Jiang and colleagues from the research group of Renato Paro, Professor of Epigenetics at ETH Zurich and the University of Basel.

On 1 August, Irene Wüthrich and Steven Schmitt embarked on their 12-month Pioneer Fellowship awarded by ETH Zurich. The two postdoctoral researchers at the Bioprocess Laboratory of Professor Panke joined forces to fight against multidrug-resistant pathogens. They are developing a microsphere technology platform to discover novel antibiotics from microbial communities. The fellowship is offered to researchers intending to develop a highly innovative product for the benefit of society.