Lucas was born in Nijmegen, The Netherlands. He studied Medical Biology at the University of Utrecht from 1993-1999, and did his PhD in Biochemistry at the ETH Zurich from 1999-2003. He was then a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany. In 2005, he became assistant professor at the Institute of Molecular Systems Biology of the ETH Zurich, and in 2010 he was elected Ernst Hadorn Chair at the University of Zurich in the Department of Molecular Life Sciences.
Valentina Marcelli was born in Bergamo, Italy. She studied Biology at Heriot Watt University in Edinburgh, Scotland, and Cell Biology and Neuroscience at Rutgers University in New Jersey, USA. She also did her Thesis in Leukemia B-CLL in the Immunology Department at Rutgers University, in the laboratory of Professor Lori Covey, in collaboration with Prof. Roger Strair at the New Jersey Cancer Institute. Afterwards, she gathered experience in Neuroscience by working in the laboratory of Professor Gabriella D’Arcangelo at the Nelson Laboratories in the Department of Cell Biology and Neuroscience at Rutgers University. Between 2009 to 2014 she worked first in the Department of Toxicology and then the ATI Department at Novartis – Basel. During this time, she contributed extensively to the development of immune assays for drug screening of immunomodulatory drugs modulating macrophage differentiation. Valentina joined the Pelkmans team in May 2015 as Lab Manager.
Noel was born in Zürich, Switzerland. He finished his apprenticeship as technician in 2016 at the IMSB, ETH Hönggerberg and after worked at the Functional Genomics Center Zürich. After his military service he then joined the Pelkmans lab in May 2020 as a infrastructure manager, the responsible person for the lab’s experimental instrumentation. He also works on the development of imaging and robotic solutions.
Doris was born in Switzerland. After her business training (Kaufmännische Berufschule) she worked as administrative assistant in different companies and since 2006 at University of Zurich. She joined the Pelkmans Team in April 2016 as administrative assistant.
Arpan was born in India. He did his Bachelors in Botany from Government College of Science, Raipur (India). After completing it, he joined an integrated MSc-PhD program at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. He joined the lab of Dr.Roop Mallik for his doctoral degree and worked on developing force spectroscopic techniques to study the mechanism of collective force generation by motor proteins inside cells. In the Pelkmans lab, Arpan works on understanding the regulatory mechanisms of liquid-liquid unmixing inside cells.
Quentin grew up in France and did his PhD in the lab of Giacomo Cavalli at the Institute of Human Genetics (French National Centre for Scientific Research, University of Montpellier). During his thesis, he combined oligo-based DNA Fluorescent in situ hybridization with super-resolution 3D-structured illumination microscopy to investigate single-cell chromosome organization in Drosophila and mouse. Quentin joined the Pelkmans lab in November 2020 to study nuclear biology in the context of multiple scale-crossing effects using multiplexed imaging approaches.
Shayan obtained his MSc degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Sheffield. After that, he joined the lab of Professor Carl-Philipp Heisenberg at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria to investigate the role of mechanical forces in shaping the developing embryo. Mainly, his PhD work focused on understanding the mechanisms that drive the cytoplasmic organization in zebrafish oocytes and embryos. His work unravelled previously uncharacterized roles of cell cytoskeleton and organelle fusion in inducing cytoplasmic organization across large length scales. Shayan joined the lab in 2022 to study the extent and potential functions of cellular heterogeneities in decision-making processes leading to tissue-scale symmetry-breaking during animal development.
Sara obtained her Master’s degree in Biochemistry from the NOVA University of Lisbon, Portugal. She then joined the lab of Professor Eurico Cabrita to pursue a PhD in Physical Chemistry with a specialization in Nuclear Magnetic Resonance. During her thesis, developed between FCT-NOVA and IQF-CSIC, she explored the structural and functional mechanisms underlying protein phase separation in ALS and SMA. Joining the Pelkmans lab in February 2024, Sara focuses on investigating and developing molecular compounds to target persistent cellular condensates, bridging structural biochemistry with image-based approaches.
Max studied Biology at ETH Zürich and recieved his Master's degree in Neurosciences. During his master thesis he investigated the morphology of C. elegans mechanosensory neurons during aging. This is when he was alerted to the need for robust, quantitative and automated analysis of ever-growing datasets in biology. He joined the Pelkmans Lab in November 2018 and will be working on establishing imaging protocols and data analysis pipelines for 3D structures.
Serguei studied both at the University of Zürich and the ETH Zürich. He received his Masters in Biotechnology. During his Master thesis he worked on a synthetic optogenetic signalling circuit that would allow the dynamic control of multiple genes based on varying single wavelength light input. He joined the Pelkmans lab in November. His research interests lie in self emerging systems and information processing in cells. He will be working on quantitative imaging approaches to study developmental dynamics in the context of scale crossing effects.
Ruth obtained her Master’s degree in Genetics and Developmental Biology from the University of Vienna, Austria. During her thesis, she studied the regulation of cell fate decisions in the human placenta. She joined the lab as a PhD student in April 2021 and aims to quantitatively study variability across different scales in multicellular structures.
Cheng-Han received his Master’s degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology from National Taiwan University. In his thesis, he investigated how untranslated regions affect translation initiation efficiency in E. coli by single-molecule FRET. He joined the Pelkmans Lab in September 2021 and will be working on applying quantitative image-based approach to study subcellular dynamics during development.
Kelvin obtained his master’s degree in Biomedical Sciences from Leiden University, the Netherlands. During this period, he worked on mechanisms of sensitivity and resistance to the anti-cancer drug indisulam at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, and on the characterization of human fetal pancreatic organoids at the Hubrecht institute. He joined the lab as a PhD student in September 2022 and aims to investigate the information content of highly multiplexed imaging in drug profiling and to integrate chemical and image-based data modalities for drug mechanism of action prediction.
Chiara completed her Bachelor’s degree in Physiology at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she studied estrogen-sensitive neuronal populations in mice. She completed her Master’s degree in Molecular Biology at the University of Padua, where her thesis focused on the role of lysosomal function in neurodegenerative disease. She joined the Pelkmans lab as a PhD student in September 2023 and is interested in studying cellular heterogeneity in 3-dimensional structures.
Ece Naz obtained her Bachelor's degree in Molecular Biology and Genetics from Boğaziçi University in Istanbul. She then earned her Master's in Genetics and Development, minoring in Bioinformatics, at the University of Zurich. Her master's research delved into pinpointing the male determining factor in a housefly strain. She joined the lab as a PhD student in August 2023 and her primary research interest centers on the quantitative analysis of early developmental stages in multicellular organisms, with a special focus on cell fate determination and spatial positioning.
Daniel obtained his Master’s degree in Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Heidelberg. Dipping in and out of different aspects of biological research he found his passion for developmental biology in the second half of his Master’s program. In his Master’s thesis he focused on single cell RNA sequencing data from patient derived brain organoids. Daniel will be working on predicting cell fate during germ layer emergence based on cellular features of the early zebrafish embryo.
Gian-Marco is a Master's student in Biochemistry at the University of Zurich. During his Bachelor's studies, he explored the properties of the RNA-binding domain YTHDC1 using molecular dynamics simulations. For his Master's thesis, Gian-Marco joined the Pelkmans Lab in 2024 to investigate the mechanisms of signaling perception in zebrafish embryos, utilizing RNA in situ hybridization and 4i protein multiplexing to unravel molecular interactions and signaling dynamics.
