ETH Zurich (Switzerland), Ph.D.

I joined the Macklis lab in January 2018 as a postdoctoral fellow. My particular interest lies in studying similarities and differences between the molecular pathways involved in axonal outgrowth and guidance of corticospinal motor neurons (CSMN) during development and in the context of regeneration following traumatic injury to the central nervous system. To compare the molecular mechanisms underlying axonal extension and circuit formation between these two states, I focus on two lines of experiments: (1) Identification and functional characterization of genes and transcriptional regulators involved in the de novo establishment of corticospinal circuits during mouse development applying deep sequencing of cellular and sub-cellular structures. (2) Transfer and cross-comparison of developmental data with respective data sets obtained from regenerating CSMN following injury in the adult nervous system of the mouse. Prior to joining the Macklis lab, I completed my Ph.D. in Neuroscience, supervised by Prof. Martin Schwab at the ETH Zurich, Switzerland. During my doctoral thesis I worked on understanding and probing the neuroanatomical adaptations underlying spontaneous functional recovery in rodents following incomplete spinal cord injury, with a particular focus on bulbospinal and propriospinal tract systems. I did my undergraduate studies in cell biology (M.Sc.) at the ETH Zurich (Switzerland) and molecular biotechnology (B.Sc.) at the University Heidelberg (Germany).