I am a postdoc at the University Medical Center Freiburg, Germany, where I am studying the regulation of human genes by DNA sequences and chromatin environment. My passion for molecular mechanisms mainly stems from my PhD time in Lausanne, Switzerland.

In 2017, I was honored by the nomination of Nobel Laureate Harald zur Hausen to participate in the 68th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting. Following up on this great experience, I initiated the "Lindau Alumni Retreat" because it is enriching to meet scientists with diverse scientific backgrounds on a regular basis. I am glad that the Lindau Spirit continues to thrive!

In my free time, I advocate for the interests of young scientists. I am mainly concerned about working conditions in academia and I have experience in bringing these issues up through my committee work in Switzerland and Sweden. I am also supporting initiatives to improve the academic research enterprise, and you can read my blog post about the Impact Factor on the Lindau blog: https://www.lindau-nobel.org/blog-from-impact-factor-to-the-nobel-prize/

I am a PosDoc at the Medical Proteome Center, RUB (Bochum, Germany), where am studying proteinogenic changes in neurodegenerative diseases. I hope once my research will help to better understand the mechanism of brain disorders and to find the adecvate strategies for their diagnostics and treatment.

In 2016 I had a great honor to be nominated by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and became a part of the most inspiring meeting in my life in Lindau. There I met well-renown peers in the area of Physiology and Medicine, who brought new aspiration in my life. Moreover I have found my friends in spirit, fabulous young scientists experienced in different scientific areas.

The Lindau Alumni Retreat for me is a great chance never lose the Lindau spirit, inspiration and the opportunity to liberate my way of thinking.

I currently work as a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Freiburg (Germany), where I study the nanoscale organization of the B cell receptor (BCR) redox machinery and the metabolism of B cells. I have always focused on basic research, because I like to understand how cells work. In particular my field of expertise combines immunology, redox signalling and cell biology and I hope my studies may in the future help to improve antibody-based therapies, developed recently against many diseases, like some types of blood cancer. This represents a strong motivation for me, having lost my dad due to a still incurable terrible disease called multiple myeloma.

In 2018 I attended the 68th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting dedicated to Physiology and Medicine, nominated by Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, being also an AvH Postdoctoral Fellowship holder. The opportunity to attend the meeting in Lindau meant really a lot to me, as you can see from the report I wrote soon after (https://www.frias.uni-freiburg.de/de/aktuelles/mitteilungen-aktuell/lindau-nobel-laureate-meeting), in which you can find all the details of my experience there.

Among the many take-home messages, I really appreciated the one stating that “You cannot learn how to do good science just from reading the literature!” and this is what we tried to implement establishing the Lindau Alumni Retreat. It is wonderful to (re)connect with other early-career excellent researchers, who experienced the “Lindau spirit” and hold dear to values like honesty, kindness, open-mindedness and curiosity in science, rather than fierce competition.

I am a biomedical chemist, currently working at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, Mainz, Germany, where I do my PhD in the fields of atmospheric sciences and allergy research. I am interested in the characterization of biological ice nucleation and their impact on the Earth’s climate. Therefore, I developed a new instrument to analyze ice nucleation activity in laboratory and environmental samples. Moreover, I study the chemical modification of proteins by anthropogenic air pollution, especially nitration and oligomerization of allergens.

The 68th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in summer 2018 was the most inspiring and motivating meeting I ever had in my life! I was nominated by the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry, which offered me the chance to exchange experiences with many nobel laureates and even more incredible young scientists. Luckily, I got the opportunity to keep the Lindau spirit up by being part of the Lindau Alumni Retreat, a network of excellent researchers and humans with outstanding personalities.

I am in the last steps of my PhD study in the field of Experimental Medicine at the Eberhard Karls University Tuebingen, Germany. My focus so far has been on oncology and immunology fields. I have been working on radio-resistance of breast cancer stem cells with the final goal of finding a targetable molecular pathway. Further more, I have investigated the phenotype changes of tumor-associated neutrophils (TANs) in tumor microenvironment.

Summer 2018 remains as one of the most amazing summer in whole my studying period! I have been nominated by Tuebingen University to attend “Lindau Nobel Laureate meeting” in 2018, the most inspiring meeting that every scientist can imagine.

Meeting “Nobel Laureates” with their passion for science and networking with young scientists with different backgrounds motivated me not only to pursue my scientist career but also to keep the Lindau inspiration by being part of “Lindau Alumni Retreat”. I am glad that I can every year refresh the outstanding Lindau experiences and share scientist achievements and/or challenges with other young scientists by attending in this follow up meeting.