Team
Prof. Dr. Sonja Schmid
Tenure-track assistant professor
sonja.schmid@clutterunibas.ch | +41612076963 | GoogleScholar | ORCID | BSKY
Sonja Schmid studied nanoscience at the University of Basel before completing her Ph.D. at the TU Munich in Thorsten Hugel's lab on the dynamics of chaperone proteins studied by single-molecule fluorescence/FRET (viva 2017). After a postdoc in Cees Dekker's lab on protein sensing using protein and solid-state nanopores at TU Delft (NL), she joined Wageningen University as a tenure-track assistant professor in 2021 and later accepted an offer from the University of Basel to join the Department of Chemistry in 2024. Schmid received the Young Fluorescence Investigator Award 2024 from the BPS Fluorescence Subgroup, as well as several Dutch and Swiss grants.
Fun Fact: Austrian cuisine is the best!
Tatsiana Dolmat
Secretariat
Tatsiana knows all admin processes and provides vital support.
Fun Fact: I like learning new things and from time to time I try out new hobbies. In the near future I would like to do a cooking course on molecular cuisine or try to cook some molecular dish at home.
Dr. Sarah Bothe
Postdoc
PhD, ETH Zurich
Sarah investigates the functional cycles of human chaperones and how co-chaperones tune their activity.
Fun fact: When Sarah is not working in the lab, she likes working out in group fitness courses.
Dr. Srijayee Ghosh
Postdoc
PhD, Univ. of Strasbourg
Srijayee studies local laser heating using a FRET-based nano-thermometer.
Fun Fact: I love plants and indoor jungles.
Dr. Wenxian Tang
Postdoc
PhD, Univ. of Sydney
Wenxian nano-fabricates low-noise nanopore chips to trap and sense single proteins in a label-free way.
Fun Fact: If you call Wenxian by her last name in Japanese, it sounds as if you are calling her Dad.
Camilla Förster, MSc
PhD candidate
MSc, Ulm University
Camilla investigates the chaperone mechanism of Hsp90 using single-molecule FRET studies.
Fun Fact: I might be addicted to caramel coffee.
camilla.foerster@clutterunibas.ch
David Fuentenebro-Navas, MSc
PhD candidate
MSc, Wageningen University
David studies kinase activity using nanopore trapping.
Fun Fact: I may be a little obsessed with unicorns & metal music, but I try to merge the best of the two worlds (I refer to my webpage profile picture).
Benjamin Vermeer, MSc
PhD candidate
MSc, Utrecht University
Benjamin's work beats the photo-bleaching limit in single-molecule FRET and therefore we can now observe the conformational dynamics of single biomolecules in much more detail.
Fun Fact: Hummingbirds flap their wings at around the same rate that we acquire our TIRF-based single-molecule data with, ranging from 10 up to 200 flaps per second. source
Fabian Zundel, MSc
PhD candidate
MSc, Univ. of Tübingen
Fabian studies biomolecular dynamics and allostery with single-molecule FRET and zero-mode waveguides.
Fun Fact: I start every morning with a cup of milk.
Bart van Bree, MSc
joint PhD candidate with Dr. Namita Sharma (BioNanoTechnology, Wageningen, NL)
MSc, Wageningen University
Bart develops a nanopore-based artificial metalloenzyme to study the molecular mechanism of metal-catalysed chemical reactions.
Fun Fact: As a metal-specialised chemist, I naturally listen often to metal-music :)
Ruiming Liu, MSc
Alumni
Lea Studer BSc.
Sabine Huber BSc.
Dr. Chenyu Wen, Assistant Professor, Uppsala University, Sweden
Hugo Maurer MSc.
Dirk Wevers MSc.
Annamarija Agnič MSc.
Jannick van Ossenbruggen MSc.
Max Scharnweber MSc.
Andreas Bardis MSc.
Floor Loozen BSc.
Ben Noordijk MSc.
Raluca Vintan MSc.
Dr. Mattia Fontana (now at RUG)
