Malte Brammerloh

Postdoctoral Fellow
Dept of Radiology, CHUV/UNIL
Email: malte.brammerloh@chuv.ch
Mailing address: Centre de Recherche en Radiologie PET3, CHUV
Rue du Bugnon 46, 1011 Lausanne, Switzerland
Office: PET3-02-230, Rue Pépinet 3, 1003 Lausanne, Switzerland

I studied Physics at Göttingen, Lisbon, and Leipzig universities. During my Master’s thesis at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, I ventured into the field of MRI. Driven by my interest in biophysical modeling, I examined the contribution of iron to the transverse MRI relaxation in the brain, in particular in a small region called substantia nigra that plays a crucial role in Parkinson’s disease.
I continued these studies in my PhD, in which I developed a biophysical model of the iron-induced transverse MRI relaxation in the substantia nigra. Based on this model, my colleagues and I proposed a sensitive MRI-based measure of the cell population most heavily affected by Parkinson’s, the dopaminergic neurons. Furthermore, I used ultra-high-field MRI at cellular resolution to characterize the magnetism of iron bound in dopaminergic neurons. Lastly, I worked on a precise neuroimaging atlas of the substantia nigra and used it to link our results to in vivo MRI and radiology. I defended my PhD in December 2023 and continued as a postdoc for one year in Leipzig.
Following my interest in developing MRI measures with cellular specificity, I joined Ileana Jelescu’s lab in early 2025, where I work on combining diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance spectroscopy and MRI. I hope this approach will enable a deeper understanding of diffusion MRI measures in the brain and their pathological alterations, opening paths to novel MRI-based clinical improvements.