We are happy to celebrate Prisca’s promotion to senior group leader at the FMI! Congratulations to Prisca and everyone who worked and helped bring the lab to this memorable moment. We enjoyed some good company and champagne on a sunny day at the Rhein and reminisced about the struggles and joys of the journey. Cheers to more science adventures to come!
Congratulations Prisca!
Prisca receives the Friedrich Miescher Award, which was established in 1969 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the discovery of DNA by the Basel scientist Friedrich Miescher. Beyond the beautiful medal, it is Switzerland’s highest distinction for outstanding achievements in biochemistry and awarded yearly to a young scientist based in Switzerland. This year the award is also shared with EPFL Professor Andrea Ablasser. Congratulations!
Virtual Christmas party
We decided that a pandemic won’t stop us from celebrating Christmas in the lab, thus, we organised a virtual Christmas party. After enjoying dinner in front of the computer, we reveiled our Secret Santa buddies, guessed baby pictures and played around with Zoom’s background and video options. Although the circumstances forced us to not celebrate in each other’s present, we still had a wonderful evening together.
Paper on phenotypic landscape of intestinal organoids published
Today, Ilya’s screen on intestinal organoid formation was published in Nature. He treated 400,000 organoids with an annotated library of 3000 compounds to infer a map of functional interactions. He also identified a small compound inhibiting RXR that maintains the regenerative state both in intestinal organoids and in mice. Check out this beautiful paper that also made it on the Nature cover. If you want to learn more about the journey that led to this publication, check out Ilya’s Behind the paper.
Review on coordinated behaviour
Marietta’s, Ilya’s and Prisca’s review on coordinated behaviour was published in ‘Current Opinion in Cell Biology’ today. If you are interested in learning more about the design principles of coordinated behaviour across scales, check out this interesting review.
Franziska joins the lab
Franziska joined the lab for her PhD. We are looking forward to work on exciting projects with you in the upcoming years!
Silvia and Jan-Daniele join the lab
Silvia and Jan-Daniele join the lab as Master’s student for the next 6 months to work on mouse and human intestinal organoids, respectively. Enjoy your stay!
5 year anniversary
Today we celebrate the 5th year anniversary of the Liberali lab with flowers and champagne!
Qiutan's paper on bioRxiv
Qiutan’s exciting story on how differences in osmotic forces combined with changes of myosin patterns drive robust intestinal crypt morphogenesis was published on bioRxiv. Congrats!
Cell scientist to watch
You want to learn more about Prisca, what drives and motivates her? Then read this inspiring interview with a ‘cell scientist to watch’.
Conny joins the lab
Conny joins the lab as a PostDoc. We wish you all the best for your exciting project and are looking forward to working with you!
Maurice starts in the lab
Maurice joins the lab for his PhD. We are looking forward to work on exciting projects with you in the upcoming years!
Shicong visits the lab
Shicong Xie, a postdoc from Jan Skotheim’s lab at the University of Stanford, joins the lab for a two months visit. She studies the cell cycle and plans to test her findings in intestinal organoids using our lightsheet microscope.
Simon joins the lab
Simon joins the lab as a Master student for 11 months. He studies molecular biotechnology at the University of Applied Sciences, FH Campus Vienna, Austria and will work on symmetry breaking in gastruloids.
Nicole and Koen start in the lab
With the new year our lab also welcomes two new members. Nicole Repina who did her PhD at UC Berkeley in the lab of David Schaffer and Koen Oost who did his PhD at the Netherlands Cancer Institute in the lab of Hugo Snippert both started their PostDoc. Their start coincides with Epiphany where Swiss traditionally eat the ‘Dreikönigskuchen’ - a ring of sweet bread buns with a little plastic king hidden in one of them. The person finding the king in their bun gets to wear a golden paper crown - and both Nicole and Koen were the lucky ones. We welcome our new queen and king to the lab and wish them all the best for their projects!
Urs defends his PhD and leaves FMI
Our year concludes with Urs’ PhD defense. Urs - who started his PhD in 2016 - first presented his PhD project in front of family, friends and colleagues and afterwards was examined by Prisca, Susan Gasser, Luca Giorgetti, Darren Gilmore and Marc Bühler. He received a ‘Summa cum laude’ for his outstanding performance. His hat was decorated with a confetti-throwing volcano that depicted the hurdles of a PhD. This also marked the end of Urs’ time at FMI. The group will miss him and wishes him all the best for his future!
Denise leaves FMI
Today marked the last day of Denise, the first student finishing her PhD and leaving the Liberali lab. We celebrated our time together over lunch and Italian pastries. After a well deserved holiday, Denise will join Kim Jensen’s lab at BRIC, Copenhagen, Denmark, in January for her PostDoc work. We wish her all the best for her future endeavours and will miss her dearly!
Prisca becomes an EMBO Young Investigator
Congratulations to Prisca who was selected to become an EMBO Young Investigator. In this program, EMBO chooses several researchers under the age of 40 who are within their first four years as group leaders and have a proven record of scientific excellence to provide both financial and practical support to help them develop skills and connections.
Ilya joins FAIM
Today, Ilya joins FAIM, the FMI imaging facility, 50% as high content screening expert while staying in the lab 50%. Congratulation to this import step!
Ilya's PhD defense
Our week of celebrations continues with Ilya’s PhD defense. Ilya - who started as Prisca’s first PhD student in August 2015 - first presented his PhD project in front of family, friends and colleagues and afterwards was examined by Prisca, Jörg Betschinger, Matthias Lutolf and Nancy Hynes. He received a ‘Summa cum laude’ for his outstanding performance. The lab prepared a hat incorporating his love for mountains and technical details in form of a revolving imaging plate. The day ended with Ilya’s greatest passion - enjoying good beer!
