Elena T.

Postdoc @EPFL | Organoid engineering | Circadian rhythms | Stem cell models | Genome editing | Disease modelling and Regenerative medicine

Lausanne, Vaud, Switzerland

About

Over the past 9 years, I’ve worked in different international laboratories in Europe, exploring stem cell biology in its many forms, driven by my curiosity for genome editing, development and disease modelling. I recently completed my PhD in Bioengineering at EPFL, where I built the lab’s intestinal organoid platform from scratch to then develop an end-to-end experimental workflow to culture intestinal organoids and investigate their circadian rhythms in real time, by integrating an organ-on-chip system with live microscopy. This PhD work was recognized with two Best Poster awards and a short-talk selection. My current interests lie at the interface of business development, R&D and New Approach Methodologies (NAMs), with a focus on building more predictive, robust and human-relevant research models.

Experience

  • EPFL (On-site)
    • Postdoctoral Researcher
      Jan 2026 - Present · 6 mos

    • PhD Student
      Sep 2021 - Dec 2025 · 4 yrs 4 mos

      Naef Lab - Laboratory of Computational and System Biology

  • DKFZ German Cancer Research Center (1 yr 2 mos)
    • Masters Thesis - Prof. Dr. Michael Boutros
      Jul 2020 - Mar 2021 · 9 mos

      "Characterizing the role of geneX during ageing, using intestinal organoids derived from mice". Skills: intestinal organoid generation and culture, immunostaining, confocal microscopy, CRISPR-Cas9 technology, qPCR, western blot, nuclear extraction.

    • Computational epigenomics - Prof. Dr. Christoph Plass
      Feb 2020 - Jun 2020 · 5 mos

      "Methylome and transcriptome analysis of human-derived fibroblasts with MeDeCom".

  • Signaling and functional genomics - Prof. Dr. Michael Boutros at DKFZ German Cancer Research Center
    Oct 2019 - Dec 2019 · 3 mos

    "Identification and validation of differentially expressed genes from transcriptomic data, from small intestinal organoids of young and aged mice"

  • Stem cell biology - Prof. Dr. Jan Lohmann at Centre for Organismal Studies Heidelberg
    Sep 2019 - Sep 2019 · 1 mo

    "Morphometrics of RRP5 mutants in Arabidopsis thaliana". Skills: A. thaliana crossings, cloning, microscopy, supervised data collection and analysis with Ilastik segmentation tool and KNIME platform.

  • Stem Cell Neurobiology - Prof. Meng Li - Neuroscience and Mental Health Research Istituite at Cardiff University / Prifysgol Caerdydd
    Sep 2017 - Jul 2018 · 11 mos

    "Investigation into the role of CYFIP1 in neurogenesis - Construction of a multiplex CRISPR/Cas9 single lentiviral plasmid" "Differentiation and validation of a dual-reporter hPSC line" Skills: human embryonic stem cells culture (hESC), cloning, CRISPR-Cas9 technology, flow cytometry, confocal microscopy, Karyotyping analysis.