Host labs

UNIL - EPFL host labs for an MD-PhD thesis

Please find below a non-exhausive list of potential UNIL-EPFL Directors of thesis/host labs able to welcome you for an MD-PhD thesis. This list will be updated once a year.

You also have the opportunity to browse the following link to see the UNIL accredited Directors of thesis.

Don't hesitate to contact one or more of them and ask for an appointment to make up your mind!

A - D

Laboratories	Thesis Directors	Subject proposed
Anaesthesiology	Suter Marc	Understanding the neuro-immune mechanisms of chronic pain
Biomedical sciences	Amati Francesca	Translational research in aging and muscle metabolism: from subcellular organelle contacts to whole organisms.
Biomedical sciences	Knobloch Marlen	Metabolic regulation of neural stem cells. The role of lipid droplets in the brain during development, adulthood and in aging.
Biomedical sciences	Tzanoulinou Stamatina	Neurobiological mechanisms of social stress.
Biomedical sciences	Widmann Christian	Uptake mechanisms of cell-penetrating peptides (CPPs) and physiological proteins bearing CPP sequences such as homeoproteins. Molecular characterization of a newly discovered endocytic pathway.
Center for Integrative Genomics	Larsch Johannes	1. Discovery of neuronal cell types controlling social behavior in zebrafish. 2. Genetic mapping of extreme social behavior. 3. Circuit tracing & manipulation during social behavior.
Center for Integrative Genomics	Reymond Alexandre	Genetic of autosomal recessive intellectual disability and developmental delay
Center for Integrative Genomics	Van Leeuwen Jolanda	Global analysis of suppressor mutations that rescue human genetic defects: “Monogenic” diseases often show diversity in disease severity across patients, which can be due to the presence of modifier mutations. Using genetic screens in cultured human cells, we aim to identify such modifier genes, to better understand differences in disease severity.
Clinical neurosciences	Crottaz-Herbette Sonia	Brain reorganization and cognitive functions recovery after stroke
Clinical neurosciences	Ryvlin Philippe	Use of large language model to help the diagnosis of Neurological disorders.

E - F

Laboratories	Thesis Directors	Subject proposed
Endocrinology, Diabetes & Metabolism	Sykiotis Gerasimos	Role of the Keap1/Nrf2 antioxidant response system in the thyroid gland
Environmental Health Unit/Unisanté	Berthet Aurélie	Research on environmental health and how pollutants may impact human health
EPFL-Endocrinology	Brisken Cathrin	1.Clinical Validation of an ex vivo assay for testing hormone and drug responses in hormone-sensitive breast cancer 2. Mechanisms of action of the embryonic estrogen, estetrol
EPFL-STI GHI	Fellay Jacques	Human Genomics of Infection and Immunity
EPFL-SV BMI	Herzog Michael Hans	1. The time course of age-related macular degeneration by using an innovative test battery evaluating both structural and functional aspects of the visual system 2. Exploring the pathology and genetics of psychotic disorders
EPFL-SV GHI	Persat Alexandre	Mechanical regulation of bacterial airway infection.
EPFL-SV IBI	Auwerx Johan	Genetic and Metabolic Control of Aging and Healthspan
EPFL-SV IBI	Deplancke Bart	Studying the genetic and molecular basis of complex diseases such as obesity and cancer using (single cell) omic technologies / approaches: We currently look for MD-PhD candidate researchers interested in studying human adipose tissue function.
EPFL-SV ISREC	Oricchio Elisa	Identification of new therapeutic targets and development of new models to study response to therapies in cancer.
EPFL-SV ISREC	Thomä Nicolas	Towards understanding the mechanism of selective estrogen receptor degraders (SERDs)
EPFL-SV SSV	Ramdya Pavan	Uncovering motor control principles in the fly. Using light-sheet microscopy, maching learning, and neural network modeling to identify principles guiding adaptive behavior for application in robotics.
Epidemiology and Health Systems/Unisanté	Avendano Pabon Mauricio	The impact of public policies on health; inequalities in health; impact of mental health interventions on young people; the determinants of healthy ageing
Epidemiology and Health Systems/Unisanté	Peytremann Bridevaux Isabelle	Various topics possible, using quantitative, qualitative or mixed methods, within the above mentioned research activity that is linked to the Swiss COhort of Health Professionals and Informal CAregivers (SCOHPICA)
Family Medicine	Müller Chabloz Yolanda	Clinical research in family medicine
Fundamental Microbiology	Veening Jan-Willem	Origins and spread of antibiotic resistance in Gram-positive bacteria
Fundamental Oncology	Gfeller David	Deciphering TCR-epitope recognition with high throughput screening and artificial intelligence
Fundamental Oncology	Ho Ping-Chih	Immunoemtabolic crosstalk in tumor evoluation and metastasis

G - O

Laboratories	Thesis Directors	Subject proposed
Gastroenterology and Hepatology	Gouttenoire Jérôme	Molecular virology and pathogenesis of hepatitis C and E
Global and Environmental Health/Unisanté	D'Acremont Valérie	Global and environmental health
Heart and Vessel	Rosenblatt-Velin Nathalie	Cellular and molecular mechanisms involved in the development of thoracic aortic aneurysms in order to develop therapeutic options.
Immunobiology	Esser-von Bieren Julia	Macrophage reprogramming in asthma & nasal polyposis
Immunobiology	Martinon Fabio	Regulation of inflammasomes in autoinflammatory diseases
Immunology and Allergy	Muller Yannick	Laboratory for advanced cell therapies in autoimmunity and allergies
Immunology and Allergy	Perez Laurent	The project aims at interrogating the human immune repertoire to identify and characterize antibodies with potential therapeutic interest. Monoclonal antibodies have been successfully used as drugs for prophylaxis treatment against infectious diseases.
Infectious Diseases	Kaufmann Daniel	Immunological consequences of spontaneous HIV reservoir activity during suppressive ART
Institute of Humanities in Medicine (IHM)	Fauvel Aude	History of medicine, of psychiatry, of women in medicine and nursing
Institute of Humanities in Medicine (IHM)	Jox Ralf	- Clinical ethics support - Neuroethics and ethics of biotechnology including AI - End-of-life decision making - Selected topics in research ethics and public health ethics
Institute of Humanities in Medicine (IHM)	Monnais Laurence	History of medicine and health (in particular: global health, immunization policies and vaccine hesitancy, history of infectious diseases, post-colonial studies, alternative medicines and medical pluralism, history and anthropology of health in Southeast Asia, history and anthropology of pharmaceuticals, migrant health, community health)
Institute of Sport Sciences (ISSUL)	Botré Francesco	Direct and indirect methods to detect the abuse of performance enhancing substances and methods in sport
Internal medicine	D'Amelio Patrizia	Maintaining Immune and Mitochondrial functions in Old adults with SAfe nutrition: the MIMOSA project
Internal medicine	Wuerzner Grégoire	Deciphering the mechanism of central blood pressure regulation in patients with Parkinson disease associated with orthostatic hypotension
Laboratory of Cell and Developmental Biology/ISREC	Gönczy Pierre	Uncovering centriole number control mechanisms in health and cancer
Laboratory Medicine and Pathology (DMPL)	Chén Oliver Yibing	Artificial intelligence in medicine.
Laboratory Medicine and Pathology (DMPL)	Ciuffi Angela	Characterization of novel candidate factors impacting HIV life cycle
Laboratory Medicine and Pathology (DMPL)	Greub Gilbert	Chlamydiae: understanding their strategies used to corrupt eucaryotic cells
Neonatology	Giannoni Eric	1. Neonatal immune responses to bacterial pathogens Neonatal sepsis 2. Accelerating detection of neonatal sepsis (ADONIS): a machine learning-based approach
Neuroheuristic Research Group	Villa Alessandro	Mindscope: Bridging the gap between fast optical brain imaging and neuronal dynamics during decision making
Nuclear Medicine and Molecular Imging	Prior John	Radiomics in nuclear medicine and molecular imaging: Radiomics extracts a large number of features from medical imaging data with the goal of uncovering patterns and characteristics failing to appear to the human observer, but able to characterize better and deeper a pathology, predict therapy response of the apparition of side effects. Cardiac perfusion analysis on myocardium manifolds using geometric deep learning and quantitative [82Rb] PET imaging (CADENCE).
Obstetric, Gestational diabetes	Puder Jardena	Brain reactions to food during pregnancy. Eating behavior in pregnancy and metabolic health
Occupational and Environmental Health	Hopf Nancy	Cancer effect biomarkers in HBM - the micronuclei frequency in harvested human buccal cells associated with exposure to air pollutants.
Oncology	Rufer Nathalie	Identifying high-avidity and high-quality individual T-cells in cancer patients.
Ophthalmology	Ansar Muhammad	Exploring Novel Inherited Retinal Disease Genes, Pathways, and Therapeutic Prospects
Ophthalmology	Ionta Silvio	Studying visuomotor interactions in the human brain by modulating neural activity in visual regions and measuring both neural and behavioral motor outputs.

P - Z

Laboratories	Thesis Directors	Subject proposed
Pulmonology	Ubags Niki	Host-microbiome interactions in respiratory diseases
Radiology	Hagmann Patric	Brain connectivity mapping, Brain functional electro-dynamics, Psychosis, Brain morphometry and microstructure, Brain-Behavior relationship
Radiology	Murray Micah	Multisensory processes across the lifespan & Development of non-invasive brain imaging/mapping technologies
Rheumathology	Geurts Jeroen	The role of bone marrow adipocytes and derived lipids in regulating pathological bone remodeling in osteoarthritis.
Swiss BioMotion Lab	Favre Julien	Movement analysis and rehabilitation, imaging of the musculoskeletal system, biomedical engineering
Swiss BioMotion Lab	Jolles-Haeberli Brigitte	The Swiss BioMotion Laboratory runs various projects aiming at improving the understanding, prevention and treatment of joint pathologies.
Transplantation Immunopathology Service	Golshayan Déla	Immune determinants of graft rejection and outcome after kidney transplantation.
Vulnerabilities and social medicine- Unisanté	Bodenmann Patrick	Our research lines gloabally aim to 1) identify populations with health inequities and describe the mechanisms driving these inequities; 2) co-develop, conduct, evaluate and disseminate interventions aimed at improving health equity in close collaboration with the target populations (community-based participatory research).
Woman-mother-child (DFME)	Tolsa Jean-François	Vascular reactivity in physiological and pathological conditions: Regulation of the human umbilical circulation in pregnancies with harmonious or restricted fetal growth