Personnel

In 2025 we welcomed three new team members: Fatijona Islami, Master Student; Leah Maithert, Intern; and Kevin Guenard, Ph.D. Student.

We also had the pleasure of celebrating four successful PhD defenses and sent these newly minted doctors into the world: Lena Mungenast, Sophie Werner, Saskia Schmid, and Zahra (Neli) Motamed.

Our teammate Joachim Koser celebrated his 20-year anniversary as a scientist with the FHNW.

Research projects

Our team kept busy on a diverse set of projects in collaboration with SCAHT, Prometheus Life Technologies, ORION, SNI and Weleda. 17 student projects at the BSc and MSc levels also began in 2025.

On the horizon for 2026 are an Innosuisse-funded project with Mettler-Toledo, Iscador, Perseo, and Alveolix; an FHNW-funded project exploring nanoparticles as intracellular detection tools; work with Yonsei Unversity (Korea) on microplastics and cell barriers, and an SNSF funded project on models to test medicines against Alzheimer’s Disease. This year, the team will implement the FAIR principles for keeping electronic notebooks and managing scientific data to make it Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable.

Publications, conferences and awards

In the midst of this action, the team published 10 manuscripts and attended 12 scientific conferences. Saskia won the award for Best Science Slam at the Organ on a Chip and Organoids workshop; Carine Gaiser was awarded the HLS prize recognizing her excellence as a teacher; Laura Suter-Dick won the Eurotox Lecture Award; and two of our students were recognized for writing the Best BSc and MSc theses at the FHNW School of Life Sciences.

Team leader Laura Suter-Dick would like to thank everyone for their hard work and looks forward to another successful year ahead.