April 1
We had the honor to host
Dr. Jan Philipp Junker from MDC-BIMSB who gave a talk on
“Transcriptional diversity and cellular plasticity in neuroblastoma” and
Dr. Paula I. P. Soares from Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia da Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, who gave a talk on
“Magnetic medical devices as remote actuators for cancer theranostics application”
Dr Jan Philipp Junker Short Bio
Philipp is a group leader at the Max Delbrück Center (BIMSB) and a professor at Charité (University Medicine Berlin). He received his PhD in Physics from TU München (Germany) in 2009 for work in single-molecule biophysics. As a postdoc at MIT and at the Hubrecht Institute (Utrecht, Netherlands) he focused on single-cell transcriptomics and developed tomo-seq, an early method for spatial transcriptomics. After joining the MDC as a group leader in 2015, he worked on developing and applying new methods in single-cell genomics using the zebrafish as his main model organism. This included development of an approach for high-throughput lineage tracing based on CRISPR-induced genomics barcodes, which was selected by Science as part of the “Breakthrough of the Year 2018”. He uses these approaches to understand mechanisms of cell fate decisions in health and disease, with a particular focus on organ regeneration and cancer. In 2019 he was selected as an “EMBO Young Investigator”, and his research has been funded by ERC Starting and Consolidator grants.
Dr Paula I. P. Soares Short Bio
Paula is a Principal Researcher at Cenimat|i3N, in the Materials Science Department of the NOVA FCT in Caparica, Portugal. Paula received her Master degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences from Faculdade de Farmácia da Universidade de Lisboa in 2009. She worked as a Pharmacist in a community pharmacy for two and a half years before starting her Ph.D. in Nanotechnologies and Nanosciences at NOVA FCT. Her Ph.D. work focused on studying the synthesis and stabilization of iron oxide nanoparticles, their coating with a biopolymer, chitosan, and the application of these multifunctional nanoparticles in the biomedical field. She obtained her PhD degree in 2015. Since then, her main scientific activities focus on developing multifunctional magnetic devices for medical applications, namely magnetic hyperthermia, magnetic resonance imaging, and controlled drug delivery systems. She has published 40 articles in peer-reviewed journals and 4 book chapters. Paula also supervises students during their Master’s thesis (+50) and Ph.D. thesis (5), and teaches theoretical and lab classes in the department related to Biomaterials, Nanomedicine, Medical imaging and theranostics. Paula was also a PI and a member of several national and collaborative projects and is a member of the YSF-ESB board since 2022.