Again this year it was a pleasure to speak to students from the five universities who participated in the Summer School on Advanced Biotechnology.

Nele Carolus

Completing an MSc, Pharmaceutical biotechnology, MCI

Tell me about the program at your school.

So far, we’ve had a mix of lectures and lab work. The second semester was focused on bioanalytics, upstream and downstream processing. I also got to participate in a creativity award with a group of fellow students, where we chose to develop a cortisol protein sensor using protein design and proteomics.

What are your study and research interests?

I’d like to focus on therapeutics and the design of medicines. Neurodegenerative diseases and cell culture in particular interest me. One thing that motivates me to study CNS diseases is that they’ve affected members of my family. Aside from personal reasons, medicine and especially neurobiology have always fascinated me. Even with sports, for example in a long-distance race, near the end we see it’s the power of the mind that makes the difference between being able to keep going or not.

Why did you decide to attend the summer school?

Connecting with people from industry was a driver. I wanted to learn about which companies are present in Switzerland, because unfortunately, as far as I know, Innsbruck has a rather limited number of companies working in my  area of interest, particularly neurobiology, CNS research, and neurodegenerative diseases.

Do you have a favourite talk or session so far?

The talks about medicine have been my favourite – and there have been a lot over the past two days! The one by Laura Suter-Dick about cell models of the brain for studying Alzheimer’s was definitely a highlight. The environmental biotech talks are also important, but I can’t connect as well with those topics.

What are your plans after you complete your master’s degree?

I’m looking to gain some hands-on experience in a company. I realised it’s a such different thing to work in a lab at a university than be in a lab in industry. I just finished a 7-week internship at a medtech company developing cochlear implants and really enjoyed this environment. It suits me better and I want to dive deeper into company life to see what I can bring forward there.

What kind of company would you like to work at later and why?

I want to work somewhere where I can put ideas into practice. I was talking to someone in the food biotech industry, and they told me the development timelines from concept to product on the market are short, about 3 years, compared to pharmaceutical biotech where it can take 10-20 years to develop a medicine. It would be fascinating to work in an innovative environment where new ideas can be rapidly translated. Maybe I’ll find something at the intersection of food and medicine – nutraceuticals? Who knows!