D-BSSE News

With the theme Rethinking Intelligence ETH Zurich invited the participants of the World Economic Forum and the general public to discover and experience the latest research in the field of artificial intelligence. Karsten Borgwardt's group participated with the game "FindComb", which exemplifies the group's work on pattern mining.

aiNET leverages artificial intelligence and large-scale networks to help pharmaceutical industries and biotechs discover biologics from big data. Its algorithms analyse antibody repertoire sequencing data and help select large-molecules that bind to cancer, infectious and autoimmune targets. 

The magazine Focus has published a list with the title "25 People for the Next 25 Years". D-BSSE professor Karsten Borgwardt is one of the listed people.

In October, D-BSSE professor Daniel Müller and his team unveiled the cantilever scale designed to detect minute fluctuations in a living cell’s mass.

ETH Zurich Career Seed Grants for postdoctoral researchers are intended to offer a funding opportunity for postdoctoral projects. D-BSSE members Marcelo Boareto (Iber group) and Weijia Wang (Schroeder group) have now been awarded.

The SRF 1 TV programme "gesundheitheute" broadcast a short documentary about Benjamin Gaub's reserach work (Müller group).  

As part of the 10^th anniversary ceremony of Venture Kick, 12 promising Swiss startups have been listed as so-called "Globals Shapers". These startups have the potential to shape the world of future generations – amongst them three D-BSSE spin-offs.

The Golden Owl 2017 has been awarded to D-BSSE Professor Karsten Borgwardt. Karsten Borgwardt develops novel Data Mining Algorithms to detect patterns and statistical dependencies in large datasets from biology and medicine.

UniteLabs AG is building new kind of flexible, easy and affordable automation for life science research facilities. At the beginning of November, the D-BSSE spin-off was successfully incorporated.

"Monitoring and Manipulating Cellular Crosstalk During Kidney Fibrosis Inside a 3D In Vitro Co-Culture" describes a novel method for imaging-based screening of 3D cell co-cultures, recapitulating the molecular crosstalk between mesenchyme and endothelia during kidney fibrosis. 

The Innosuisse board has appointed 37 new experts for the duration of one year – D-BSSE Professor Martin Fussenegger is one of them. The newly elected experts are going to support the Innovation board in the evaluation of projects and funding applications. Innosuisse promotes science-based innovation in the interests of industry and society in Switzerland.

Enkelejda Miho is a Pioneer Fellow at ETH Zurich Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering and develops new large-scale data software for biopharmaceutical drug discovery. Her research aims at uncovering the architecture of complex immune repertoires, and at mining their sequence space features in basic and applied systems immunology. In the interview with ETH News for Industry, she explains how her software immuneS helps identifying promising drug candidates in a billion molecules.

In the newspaper Tagesanzeiger Professor Karsten Borgwardt talks about personalised medicine and big data.

Professor Timm Schroeder receives the Erwin-Schrödinger-Prize 2017 together with Fabian Theis and Carsten Marr at the Helmholtz Zentrum München and Laleh Haghverdi from the EMBL-EBI Hinxton. In an interdisciplinary collaboration, the team has shown how data from individual blood stem cells can be used to quantify and predict their fate: Their new algorithms provide insights into cell development. These insights are also important for a better understanding of blood disorders like leukemia.

The new SystemsX film features the work of D-BSSE staff members Weijia Wang and Michele Fiscella. The documentary "The Human Body: the ultimate frontier of complexity" shows how researchers obtain their knowledge with the help of robots, computer chips and super-resolution microscopes.

A record number of visitors attended the ETH Zurich Industry Day 2017. Around 550 representatives from industry and business met with scientists for a lively debate on the Hönggerberg. The D-BSSE spin-off company MaxWell Biosystems was also part of the event.

An online community teaching material resource by Professor Tanja Stadler and her group at the ETH Zurich Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering in Basel facilitates the use of a software programme to investigate disease problems. The online resource is called “Taming the BEAST”.

For this year’s award-winning thesis, Elise Aeby developed a microfluidic platform designed to study individual cells in microtissues. Elise Aeby worked in the research group of Andreas Hierlemann at the Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering in Basel.

Martin Fussenegger from the ETH Zurich Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering is newly elected EMBO member. The European Molecular Biology Organisation promotes excellence in life sciences.

Biological systems display properties that cannot be matched by synthetic approaches. Implementing the advances in life sciences into the design options of synthetic molecular systems is a major scientific challenge. To address this challenge, the International Conference on Molecular Systems Engineering (ICMSE) will bring together world leaders in the characterisation and engineering of complex chemical and biological systems.

The research group of Professor Sai Reddy at the ETH Zurich Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering in Basel has published a new paper about high genetic and antigen-driven predetermination of antibody repertoires throughout B cell development.

Last Wednesday the new Head of the Education Department of the Canton Basel-Stadt paid the ETH Zurich Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering a visit: Dr. Conradin Cramer got a first impression of the ETH Zurich’s site in Basel and the Department’s interdisciplinary research work. 

Renato Paro, the first Chair of D-BSSE, sees D-BSSE becoming part of a Zurich – Basel axis in medicine. Renato Paro has been Professor of Biosystems at ETH Zurich since 2006 and talks about the D-BSSE founding period in the staff magazine "life".

In the newspaper BaZ ETH President Lino Guzzella talks about 10 years D-BSSE in Basel and future research plans.  

The National Academy of Engineering has elected 84 new members and 22 foreign members – one of them is D-BSSE Professor Martin Fussenegger for his contributions to Synthetic Biology and engineered therapeutic gene networks. 

Dr David Martinez-Martin from the Müller group (ETH Zurich Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering) has received the Excellence Award in Physics for his design and construction of a picoscopic cell balance. 

The business journal Capital ranks Karsten Borgwardt as one of the “Top 40 under 40” in the category “State and Society”. Every year the journal publishes a “Top 40 under 40” ranking within different categories – the main goal is to identify Germans younger than 40 with high potential.

Michele Fiscella (Bio Engineering Laboratory) received the Swiss OphthAward in the category „Best Experimental Work“. The Swiss OphthAward is endowed with CHF 10'000 and granted to young scientists doing basic research in the field of ophthalmology.

An artificial enzyme is compartmentalised and evolved in vivo for olefin metathesis – a reaction without equivalent in nature. In a joint effort, the groups of Tom Ward (University of Basel) and Sven Panke (ETH Zurich) have developed an artificial metalloenzyme that could be a prime example for creating new non-natural metabolic pathways inside living cells.

A team led by ETH Zurich Professor Yaakov Benenson has developed a Synthetic Biology platform that senses intracellular activities of mammalian transcription factors. This platform opens the way to precise sensing of and responding to diverse cell states and activities.

ETH Professor and scientist Sai Reddy and members of his research group have engineered a hybridoma platform for reprogramming the antibody specificity of immune cells. This new platform - so-called plug-and-(dis)play hybridomas - enables researchers to easily generate new cell lines that secrete any antibody of interest.

Felix Franke (Bio Engineering Laboratory) received an Ambizione grant of CHF 583 000 for three years from the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Researchers of the ETH Zurich have shown how noise filters can be realised using biochemical reactions. This could help improve the reliability of synthetic biological circuits and play an important role in the development of new medical therapies.

Sai Reddy from the ETH Zurich Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering receives the prestigious Grand Challenges Explorations grant for innovative research in global health and development. 

Daniel Müller from the ETH Zurich Department of Biosystems Science and Engineering is newly elected EMBO member. The European Molecular Biology Organisation promotes excellence in life sciences.