Student Scholarship 2024

After completing my Master's degree in Biomedicine, I have decided to gain further experience in the form of a stay abroad and will be completing a six-month research internship at the La Jolla Institute of Immunology in San Diego. At the La Jolla Institute of Immunology, various laboratory groups are researching the immune system with the aim of contributing to the development of new therapies and cures for autoimmune diseases, cancer and infectious diseases. During my internship, I will be working in the laboratory group of Prof. Dr. Hilde Cheroutre, which specializes in the research of T cells, their development, function and regulation. My project deals with the development of so-called “double-negative T cells” and their influence on autoimmune diseases.

Solidarity economy strategies are a promising approach to overcoming some of the current limitations of certification schemes for smallholder welfare. However, previous research has neglected behavioral and psychological mechanisms that help explain the conditions under which a particular governance strategy has a positive impact on producer welfare. This is problematic insofar as the consideration of human motives and needs is of central importance for sustainable and equitable development. In cooperation with the Center for Development and Environment (CDE) at the University of Bern, my master's thesis therefore involves conducting semi-structured interviews with over 100 Peruvian coffee and cocoa producers from three different cooperatives and organizations in Peru. The interviews focused on the producers' perception of the implementation of sustainability strategies of private governance as well as their well-being, motives and needs.
By incorporating a socio-psychological perspective, my master's thesis aims to provide valuable interdisciplinary insights into the complex dynamics of sustainability strategies of private governance in global agri-food systems.

Julia  Bugajska’s  internship  at  the   Nazarian   laboratory   at  Children’s National from September 23rd to December 20th 2024. The aim of her internship  is  to  validate  and  generalize  findings  of  her  Masters  thesis,  which aims  to  use  digital  pathology foundation models to predict various pediatric brain tumour  characteristics  from  H&E  imaging  including  tumor  subtypes  and  key mutations  as  well  as  spatial-resolution  protein  expression.  Developing  these machine  learning  models  is  highly  dependent  on  the  availabilitiy  of  data  to validate and generalize the models. Therefore, Julia will complete this internship to help curate and to use the available data and be involved in wet and dry lab  data collection  and  preprocessing  to   evaluate   a   range   of   feature   extraction   and prediction models.

As a physics master's student at the University of Zurich, I will be spending an exchange semester at the Sorbonne Université in Paris in spring 2025. My research project is dedicated to the electron-phonon coupling in SrTiO₃ (STO) and its influence on the superconducting properties. In particular, I am investigating the unusual isotope effect that increases the critical temperature by 50% by exchanging ¹⁶O with ¹⁸O. Under the supervision of Prof. Johan Chang (UZH) and in collaboration with Prof. Benoît Fauqué (ESPCI Paris), I am analyzing high quality STO crystals using RIXS (Resonant Inelastic X-ray Scattering) to decipher the role of transverse and longitudinal optical phonon modes. The aim is to expand the understanding of superconductivity in STO and to provide valuable insights for research on strongly correlated electron systems.

Our cities are constantly growing and changing. Animals that live in cities have to be flexible and adapt to these changes in order to survive. Since evolution is a rather slow process, adaptation should be in behavior and cognition. Cognitive flexibility is the brain's ability to adapt to new or unexpected events and is therefore a suitable measure of adaptability. As part of my master's thesis, I would like to investigate the cognitive flexibility of yellow-crested cockatoos in Sydney, Australia. For this purpose, I am using a so-called “puzzle box” with a touch screen and a food dispenser. The cockatoos' task will be to learn two different shapes on the screen and click on the correct shape to receive a reward. Once this behavior is established, the shapes swap roles (correct becomes incorrect and vice versa). I want to find out how long it takes for the cockatoos to relearn. What particularly excites me about the work is the field work. The cockatoos are wild and take part in the experiment voluntarily. This approach maximizes animal welfare and allows me to study behavior that is as natural as possible.

The European Dipper, a remarkable songbird known for its ability to hunt underwater, serves as a key indicator of the health of freshwater ecosystems and is the focus of my master’s research. With the support of this scholarship, I will conduct fieldwork in France and present my findings at the European Ornithology Conference in Bangor, UK. I will spend two months in the Massif de la Chartreuse, studying the dipper population. My work will involve collecting samples, monitoring health traits, and observing reproductive efforts. Subsequent laboratory work at the Swiss Ornithological Institute, combined with detailed data analysis, will allow me to investigate how mercury pollution affects the birds' physiology and fitness. The aim of this project is to deepen the understanding of how mercury pollution affects bird health, reproduction, and survival. This research will provide valuable insights into the broader effects of environmental pollution on avian populations and contribute to wildlife conservation efforts.

I am in the final year of my specialized Master's degree in Biostatistics and will be writing my Master's thesis in the coming semester under the supervision of Prof. Torsten Hothorn (UZH), Dr. Lucas Kook (WU Vienna) and Dr. Ieuan Clay (ETH). During a four-week research stay at WU Vienna (March 3 - 31, 2025), I would like to deepen the collaboration with Dr. Lucas Kook and develop trend-setting approaches for my master's thesis. The aim is to expand causal models in order to better understand context-dependent patterns in
better understand context-dependent patterns in mental health diagnostics.