Team

Marlen Knobloch, Associate Professor

Marlen Knobloch has obtained her PhD at the University of Zurich in the Group of Prof. Nitsch, where she developed and characterized a novel mouse model for Alzheimer’s disease. During her PhD, she furthermore contributed to an innovative immunization approach against Alzheimer’s disease, which has been further developped by Neurimmune/Biogen.

Dr. Knobloch moved on to do her postdoc in the Group of Prof. Jessberger at the University of Zurich, where she has been studying the metabolic requirements of adult neural stem cells. Her work has uncovered important novel mechanisms how lipid metabolism controls neural stem cell activity. She has further been a guest postdoc at EPFL in the Group of Prof. Luetolf.

In 2017, Dr. Knobloch has obtained an assistant professorship in the Department of Biomedical Sciences at the University of Lausanne where she has established the Laboratory of Stem Cell Metabolism. She has been promoted to Associate professor on the first of March 2023.

Vanille Maillard, Laboratory technician

Vanille joined the Departement of Biomedical Sciences in 2017. During the two years of her apprenticeship, she were trained by the group of Marie-Gabrielle Zurich, Christian Widmann and the Platform of Metabolomics. Currenty, she is the lab technician working for both Marlen Knobloch’s lab and Marie-Gabrielle Zurich’s lab. She is involving in cell cultures of iPSCs, NPCs, human 3D brain culture, human brain organoid culture, in enzymatic activity analyses, real-time RT-PCR, immunostaining, immunoblotting and in metabolic profiling using Seahorse technology. She manages the lab and is involved in numerous projects with all group members.

Francesco Petrelli, PhD, Research Associate

Francesco obtained his Master- and PhD degree in Italy at University of Calabria, studying the roles of glial cells in neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration. Afterwards, he moved as a Post-Doc in Paola Bezzi’s Lab at the University of Lausanne, where he studied the role of astrocytes in the modulation of dopamine levels during postnatal cortex development. Thereafter, he joined the lab of Jean-Claude Martinou at the University of Geneva, as a Research Associate, where he is investigating, in collaboration with Marlen Knobloch’s lab, the effect of Mitochondria Pyruvate Carrier 1 deletion on astrocytes and neural stem cells. Francesco has joined Marlen Knobloch’s lab as a Research Associate in April 2020 and is currently working on lipid metabolism of glial cells in physiological and pathological conditions

Carlotta Gilardi, PhD, postdoctoral fellow

Carlotta obtained her master’s degree in Neuroscience at the University of Trieste. During her master’s thesis at the Max Planck Institute in Dresden, in Wieland Huttner’s lab (with Dr. Nereo Kalebic), she explored the functional role of human-specific genes and the morphology of neural stem cells on neocortex development in mouse, ferret, and human. Afterwards, she joined Prof. Gerhard Schratt at ETH Zurich as a PhD student to investigate the role of microRNAs in the onset and progression of mood disorders. Carlotta joined the lab in August 2024 to investigate lipid metabolism in the developing human brain in physiological and pathological settings.  

Marie Igelbüscher, PhD-student

Marie obtained her Bachelor in Applied Biology and her Master in Molecular Biology and Bio-technology at the University of Bonn. During her master thesis project in Volker Busskamp’s Lab she worked on establishing a transcription factor driven differentiation protocol to obtain microglia from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs). She joined Marlen Knobloch’s group in September 2022 as a PhD student to investigate lipid droplet (LD) dynamics and function in the developing mouse and human brain.

Diana Panfilova, PhD-student

Diana obtained her Bachelor’s degree in Biochemistry at the University of Halle-Wittenberg and her Master’s degree in Molecular Life Sciences at the University of Jena. During her master’s thesis in Alessandro Ori’s lab, she studied the impact of the proteasome inhibition on the ubiquitin profile of iPSC-derived human neurons (iNeurons) using liquid chromatography linked mass spectrometry (LC-MS). Diana joined Marlen Knobloch’s lab in November 2022 as a PhD student and is currently investigating the role of LDs in cellular identity.  

Alicia Rey, PhD-student

Alicia obtained her Bachelor in Biology and her Master’s degree in Medical Biology at the University of Lausanne. She joined Marlen Knobloch’s lab in April 2022 to complete her Master’s thesis on the role of astrocytic fatty acid beta-oxidation (FAO) in postnatal brain development and in Alzheimer´s disease. She remained in the lab as a research Intern where she was involved in optimizing lipid droplet staining techniques for five months. In December 2023, she returned to the lab as a PhD student to study the role of brain lipid droplets in ageing and disease.

Ece Trak, Laboratory technician

Ece completed her Bachelor’s degree in Molecular Biology and Genetics at Istanbul Technical University, followed by a Master’s degree in Neuroscience at the University of Geneva. During her Master’s thesis in Olivier Baud’s lab, she focused on the role of oxytocin on reactive microglia in a mouse model of pediatric traumatic brain injury. Ece joined Marlen Knobloch’s lab in August 2024 as a Lab Technician and is currently working on the project investigating the role of the mitochondrial pyruvate carrier in Alzheimer’s disease.

Livia di Martino, Laboratory apprentice

Livia started her apprenticeship as a biology laboratory assistant in 2021. During her apprenticeship, she was trained in various techniques by the group of by Marie-Gabrielle Zurich, Mehdi Tafti and Christian Widmann. She joined Marlen Knobloch’s laboratory in January 2024 for the final months of her apprenticeship

Jonathan Nicolet, First step student

Jonathan is doing his master in medical biology at the UNIL and works with Diana on his first-step project about the role of lipid droplets for NSPC quiescence.

Fo’Aad Yassin Hussein, Master student 2023

Yoshihito Hayashi, visiting scientist 2023