Lab Members

Franka Voigt

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.

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Claudia Brunner

Claudia was born in Weiden, Germany. She graduated as a Medical Technician in Regensburg, Germany. After a few years in Munich working as a Research Assistant at the TU, she decided to move to Zurich and began working in Prof.Rolf Nöthiger’s lab at UZH. Claudia is an experienced lab manager, who joined the Voigt lab in late 2023.
In addition to labwork and running the lab, she also educates Biology Technician apprentices (Lehrmeister) and students.
Her passion is to travel!

Aileen-Diane Bamford

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 2021 and focuses on the investigation of gene expression dynamics during early human brain organoid development.

Nikolaus Beer

Niko was born in Austria and achieved both his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at the University of Vienna. While pursuing his MSc research in the Ameres lab, he deciphered the in-vivo assembly process of the RNA-exosome, a critical machinery for RNA processing and degradation, in mouse embryonic stem cells. This experience heightened his fascination with the intricate world of post-transcriptional regulation of gene expression. Currently, for his PhD which he started in August 2023, he is dedicated to advancing our understanding how regulation of intracellular mRNA localization is achieved and how mRNA localization is connected to translation efficiency.

Suria Itzel Morales Guzmán

Suria obtained her bachelor’s degree in Biotechnology Engineering from ITESM in Monterrey, Mexico. She then moved to Germany to pursue a Master’s degree in Molecular and Cellular Biology at Heidelberg University. During her master’s thesis, she worked on the XBP1 non-conventional splicing reaction that triggers the IRE1 branch of the unfolded protein response (UPR). She started her PhD at the Voigt lab in August 2023 and aims to investigate the targeting mechanisms of cytoskeleton-associated mRNAs.

Simon Tobias Waldner

Simon is a Neuroscience Master student at UZH. He works together with Aileen on imaging brain organoid development in collaboration with the Treutlein lab at ETH Zurich DBSSE.