Prisca Liberali

Prisca has been trained as a physical organic chemist with a focus on the dynamical understanding of organic chemical reactions. She then changed fields for her PhD and became a molecular cell biologist. She has developed single-cell methods to study cell-to-cell variability and its involvement in the emergence of complex cellular traits. Since a few years she has become fascinated by the role of self-organisation in collective cell behaviours , and how these can control intracellular signalling in single cells. Because these emergent phenomena have multiple layers of biological organisation at different scales, she believes that novel experimental, quantitative and statistical methods are required to integrate our understanding of single-cell biology. Currently, she is a professor at the FMI with a lab focused on dynamics of self-organisation, and how cellular signalling dictates its spatial-temporal regulation.

Laura Capolupo

Laura did her PhD at EPFL in Lausanne focusing on lipid cell biology with a particular interest in understanding whether and how lipids can influence and change cellular states. She joined the Liberali lab as postdoctoral research in August 2022.

Now she is using intestinal organoids as a model system to get a deeper insight into the involvement of lipid metabolism in cell fate determination during self-organization with a focus on stem cell niche formation.

Clara Baader

Clara joined the lab as a PhD student in September 2019. She obtained her bachelor’s and master’s degree in Molecular Biosciences from the University of Heidelberg. During her masters she focused on Developmental and Stem Cell Biology and received training at the Centre for Organismal Studies and the EMBL in Heidelberg. Now she is interested in analyzing how stem cell niches are formed in intestinal organoids.

Cornelia Schwayer

Cornelia did her PhD at IST Austria with the focus on mechanosensing of tight junctions during epithelial tissue spreading in embryonic development. She joined the Liberali lab as a postdoctoral researcher in May 2020, where she investigates mechanochemical feedback systems underlying symmetry breaking in intestinal organoids.

Romy Verhagen

Romy joined the lab as a Master Student in November 2023. She is currently studying Biomolecular Sciences at the Vrije University of Amsterdam, with a specialization in Molecular Cell Biology. During her first internship she worked with tumoroids in the Clevers lab at the Prinses Maxima Centre in Utrecht. With an interest in early embryonic development, she joined the Liberali lab as a Master Student. Currently, she is working with Simon and Seoyoung on cell fate decisions in early embryonic development, using blastoids.

Gustavo Quintas Glasner de Medeiros

Gustavo did his PhD work on deep tissue light-sheet microscopy at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg, and started in the lab as a Postdoctoral fellow in January 2018. Gustavo switched to a position as a Research Associate in 2022.

His main interests are in the development of imaging and perturbation methods which allow an in-depth study of the dynamics behind symmetry-breaking during intestinal organoid growth.

Koen OOst

Koen joined the lab as a postdoctoral researcher in January 2020. During his PhD he focused on cell fate dynamics in intestinal homeostasis and cancer at the UMC Utrecht. He then studied colorectal cancer metastases using intravital imaging as a postdoctoral researcher at Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam. 

His main interests are in the development of new genetic tools for real-time fluorescence microscopy and quantitative biology which allows for in-depth studies of the dynamic processes during human tissue regeneration.

Ludivine Challet Meylan

Ludivine joined the lab as a technical/research associate in January 2018. She obtained her PhD in neurogenetic from the University of Geneva in 2012. She then studied vascular disorders using stem cell and genome engineering technologies as a SNSF postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University.

Her current tasks include implementing new protocols and techniques for the lab and establishing projects involving human organoids.

Marius Mählen

Marius joined the lab as a PhD student in July 2023, after he had studied medicine and received the MSc. degree in Experimental Medicine at the University of Münster. During his studies, he spent one research year as a BIF MD fellow in the Friedl lab in Nijmegen, where he worked with cancer spheroids and another year in the Weigelin lab in Tübingen as a Master student, where he worked on whole organ lightsheet microscopy and ex vivo tissue cultures.
During his PhD he wants to get a better understanding of regeneration with an interest in bridging different scales.

Matteo Carletti

Matteo joined the lab in January 2024 as a Master Student; he studies Cellular and Molecular Biotechnology in Trento and during his bachelor thesis he focused on the epigenetic role of PRC1/2 in epidermal and intestinal adult stem cells.

Now, using mouse intestinal organoids, he wants to investigate how different metabolic programs influence and support the regenerative potential of the intestinal niche.

Maurice Kahnwald

Maurice joined the lab as a PhD student in March 2020. He obtained his MSc degree in Biomedical Science and Technology from Hochschule Mannheim, Germany, after conducting his master thesis and a research period at EMBL Heidelberg. There, he worked on methods to quantitatively determine and improve the image quality in single molecule localization microscopy. 

For his doctoral studies, Maurice aims to improve multiplexed imaging in human organoids to analyze how growth patterns in healthy and diseased models differ.

Nadim Aizarani

Nadim did his Ph.D. at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg, Germany focusing on single-cell biology of the liver in the context of health, disease, and regeneration. He joined the Liberali lab as a postdoctoral researcher in April 2022, where he investigates the emergence and plasticity of colorectal cancer in human intestinal organoids.

Nicole Repina

Nicole did her PhD in bioengineering at UC Berkeley, where she developed optogenetic techniques to control the dynamics of cell signaling in stem cells. She joined the Liberali lab as a postdoctoral researcher in January 2020 and aims to uncover the molecular mechanisms regulating cell-to-cell phenotypic diversity during differentiation and tissue development.

Simon Suppinger

Simon joined the lab as a Master Student in February 2020, and as a PhD student in July 2021. He previously studied Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Applied Sciences, FH Campus Vienna. He used time resolved NMR to analyze phosphorylation-kinetics in transcription at the ISMB and Francis Crick Institute and further received training at the MPI in Munich.

Now he wants to get a deeper insight into symmetry breaking in early embryonic development and tries to overcome the problem of inaccessibility of mammalian embryos by using gastruloids.

Seoyoung Choi

Seoyoung joined the lab as a PhD student in August 2023. She obtained her MSc degree in Biology at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), where she studied dynamic niche interaction in cerebral organoids. She further received training at the IMBA Institute in Vienna, and she joined the Liberali lab as a PhD student.

Now she aims to study the cell fate decision in early embryonic development by using blastoids.

Silvia Barbiero

Silvia is an Italian Medical Doctor, who joined the lab as a Master Student in August 2020, and as a PhD student in September 2021. She studied Medicine and Surgery at the University of Pisa and the Sant'Anna School of Advanced Studies. She previously investigated the physiological relevance of circadian rhythms in cytosolic ion abundance and the behaviour of intrinsically disordered proteins at single cell resolution at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge (UK).

Now she wants get a deeper insight on the metabolic programs sustaining simmetry breaking events in developing intestinal organoids.

Franziska Moos

Franziska joined the lab as PhD student in September 2020. She obtained her MSc degree in Applied Physics from the University of Freiburg. During her masters, she was working with optical traps to study the cell wall synthesis in bacteria.

Now she is working on the development and improvement of imaging technologies, and she wants to study collective cell migration in intestinal organoids.

Joel Lüthi

Joel joined the lab in May 2022 as bioimage analyst. He did his PhD at the University of Zurich studying cardiac differentiation and developing 3D image analysis pipelines.

Now he works on building Python-based 3D image analysis and visualisation workflows to study high content images of organoids and other 3D structures. Joel will continue this work as part of the developed Fractal platform at the BioVisionCenter at University of Zürich as the Head of Research and Development but remains associated to the Liberali Group.