Fellowship to understand if epigenetics prime evolution

Dr. Sito Torres-Garcia from our Hannon Group has been selected for The Branco Weiss Fellowship, a program for outstanding postdoctoral researchers hosted by ETH Zurich. Dr. Torres-Garcia now enjoys up to five years of academic freedom to perform his interdisciplinary research at any institution in the world.

Dr. Torres-Garcia’s research will develop, deploy, and integrate novel experimental and computational approaches to investigate the role of epigenetic mechanisms in the emergence and evolution of therapy resistance in metastatic cancer – a major biomedical challenge wherein tumor cells from a primary site gradually colonize distant organs.

The cross-disciplinary project will blend novel laboratory models with innovative experimental and computational methodologies to study cancer progression under standard-of-care therapy in unprecedent detail. By bridging the fields of Epigenetics, Evolution and Cancer Biology, this study aims to shed light on broad principles of eukaryotic adaptation and reveal potential therapeutic opportunities to improve patient outcomes.

The Branco Weiss Fellowship offers an opportunity for postdocs in all areas of the natural and social sciences as well as engineering who have conceived an original and independent research idea that falls outside the scope of large-scale research projects.

This year’s fellows come from a wide range of research fields including astronomy, biology, biochemistry, biotechnology, computer science, epigenetics, geophysics, medicine, neuroscience, physics, sciences of religions, and virology. They originate from France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United Kingdom and are currently working at institutions and universities in the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the USA.

“The quality of applications for the Branco Weiss Fellowships is always impressively high. After rigorous rounds of evaluation by experts and the final interviews, nine new fellows were selected. We are looking forward to the exciting new projects which complement and expand the research topics of the Fellowship community”, said the fellowship’s member of the directorate Heidi Wunderli-Allenspach.