Members of the Martin lab

Sophie Martin

Sophie studied at the Universities of Lausanne and Zurich. She earned her master degree studying chromatin organization with Susan Gasser, and her PhD from Cambridge University, studying cell polarization in Drosophila with Daniel St Johnston. She then joined the lab of Fred Chang at Columbia University in New York, where she started using fission yeast as model system to study cell polarization. She became an assistant professor in 2007 and an associate professor in 2010. Click here for a more detailed CV.

Vincent Vincenzetti

Vincent did his apprenticeship at the University of Neuchâtel. In 2002 he moved to the University of Zurich to work in the group of PD Dr. M. Geisler on the role of ABCB/PGP- and PIN-type auxin transporters in plants. He joined the lab in July 2010.

Felipe Bendezú

Felipe earned a BS in Microbiology from The Ohio State University in the USA in 1999. After two years as a graduate and teaching associate at Bowling Green State University studying bacterial pathogenesis, he joined the lab of Piet de Boer at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland (USA), where he studied cell shape determination in the bacterium Escherichia coli. He earned his PhD and joined the lab in 2008.

Olivier Hachet

Olivier studied biology in Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris. In 2000, he joined the EMBL PhD program in Heidelberg (Germany). There, in the laboratory of Dr. Anne Ephrussi, he studied the mechanisms of mRNA sub-cellular localization using Drosophila melanogaster and obtained his PhD in 2004. In 2005, Olivier moved to Switzerland to work as a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Pr. Viesturs Simanis at ISREC/EPFL. Using Schizosaccharomyces pombe, he studied the regulations that govern the remodeling of the actin cytoskeleton during cytokinesis. He joined the lab in February 2009.

Payal Bhatia

Payal obtained her Microbiology Bachelor's degree in 2004 and her Master's degree in Plant Molecular Biology in 2006 from the University of Delhi. From 2006 to 2010 she worked in Dr. Stefano Ferrari's lab at the University of Zurich as a graduate student of the Cancer Biology PhD program. There she studied the mechanism by which the mitotic kinase Aurora A is inhibited in response to DNA damage using mammalian cell lines. She joined the group in June 2011 as a postdoctoral fellow.

Pranav Ullal

After completing his BS in Life Sciences in his hometown of Bangalore, India, Pranav moved to Glasgow, Scotland where he completed an M.Res in Biomedical Science. One of the M.Res projects dealt with cell cycle related transcription in fission yeast in the lab of Dr. Christopher McInerny. He then moved to London for his PhD, where he worked on DNA repair mechanisms using the budding yeast model in the lab of Dr. Luis Aragon at the MRC Clinical Sciences Center, Imperial College. His project elucidated mechanisms of DNA double-stranded break repair. After completing his PhD, the desire to do some science in India as well as gain some experience in a different model, led him to Pune, India on a short-term Wellcome Trust fellowship and he worked at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) on Sumoylation in Drosophila. His desire to go back to working with S. pombe led to his joining the lab in November, 2011.

Laura Merlini

Laura studied industrial biotechnology at the University of Milano-Bicocca. There and in Montpellier, where her supervisor moved in 2010, she worked as undergraduate and graduate student in the laboratory of Prof. Simonetta Piatti and she obtained her PhD in industrial biotechnology in 2011. During these years she studied mitotic exit and cytokinesis using budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae as model organism. She joined the group in April 2012 as a postdoctoral fellow.

Manasi Kelkar

Manasi obtained her Bachelor in Life Sciences and Biochemistry from the University of Mumbai, India in 2008. She then moved to the University of Pune, India where she obtained her Master in 2010. There in the lab of Pr. Deobagkar she worked on identifying the differential DNA methylation patterns in mice tissues. She joined the lab as a PhD student in October 2010.

Omaya Dudin

After finishing high-school in his motherland Palestine, Omaya obtained a BS in Molecular and Cellular Biology and a Master in Microbiology from Grenoble University in France, country of his second citizenship. He worked in Pr. Geiselmann’s Lab on the stress response in E. coli in the second year of his BS. During his studies and for one additional year as a research engineer, Omaya worked on several projects, including the RpoS-Crl regulon and the lifestyle switch between adhesion and motility. He joined the lab as a PhD Student in September 2011.

Daniela Gallo

Daniela was born in Uruguay and moved to Italy when she was 15 years old and holds both citizenships. She obtained her bachelor degree in Industrial and Environmental Biotechnologies and her master degree in Molecular Biotechnologies and Bioinformatics from the University of Milan. She worked in the lab of Prof. Marco Muzi-Falconi and Prof. Paolo Plevani for two years, first as undergraduate student and then as graduated student, studying the physiological role of Haspin homologues in Saccharomyces cerevisae. She joined the lab in September 2012 as PhD student after obtaining a studentship from the Faculty of Biology and Medicine.