Franka obtained her PhD from EMBL Heidelberg, Germany, where she used structural biology and biochemistry to characterize the molecular mechanisms of ribonucleoprotein (RNP) assembly and function. She then moved on to do her postdoctoral work at the Friedrich-Miescher-Institute for Biomedical Research in Basel, Switzerland, where she developed single-mRNA imaging methods that allow visualization of RNPs in live cells and 3D organoid model systems. Starting from 2023 she is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Molecular Life Sciences at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.
Aileen is a shared PhD student between the Voigt lab at University of Zurich and the Treutlein lab at ETH Zurich DBSSE. She started her PhD in early 2020 and focuses on the investigation of gene expression dynamics during early human brain organoid development.