Inaugural Lectures SV - Paloma Navarro, Florian Schüder
Event details
| Date | 11.11.2026 |
| Hour | 17:15 › 19:30 |
| Speaker |
Prof. Paloma Navarro Prof. Florian Schüder |
| Location | |
| Category | Inaugural lectures - Honorary Lecture |
| Event Language | English |
Date: Wednesday November 11, 2026
Program:
Registration: Click here
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Prof. Paloma Navarro
Engineering Precision Immunotherapies for the Aging Brain
Abstract
As we age, our brains slowly change memory can falter, thinking can slow, and the risk of diseases like Alzheimer's rises. For decades, aging research has focused on the brain's own cells. But our bodies also carry a second, powerful system that changes with age: the immune system. Best known for fighting infections, the immune system also reaches into the brain and helps shape how it works. My research aims to answer a simple but underexplored question: as the immune system ages, does it stop protecting the brain and start harming it, and if so, can we intervene?
I will share how I have used engineered proteins, delivered directly into the brain, to precisely target specific immune cells and rebalance their behavior. Building on this work, my lab is now developing a toolkit of precision tools, each aimed at a different brain immune cell type. The goal is to translate this work into "aging immunotherapies": treatments that restore balance to the aging immune system, strengthen the brain's resilience, and reduce the risk of neurodegenerative disease.
About the speaker
Paloma Navarro Negredo studied Natural Sciences with an emphasis in Pharmacology at St John's College, University of Cambridge, before earning her Master's and PhD in Clinical Biochemistry, also at Cambridge. In the laboratory of Prof. Margaret S. Robinson she studied how proteins are sorted and trafficked inside cells. She then moved to Stanford University for postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Prof. Anne Brunet, supported by a Human Frontier Science Program fellowship. At Stanford she investigated changes in the aging brain, with a particular focus on immune cells and strategies to target them using engineered proteins.
Paloma is now an Assistant Professor at the School of Life Sciences at EPFL, where she leads a research group investigating how the aging immune system contributes to the decline of brain function.
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Prof. Florian Schüder
Programming DNA for Multiplexed Super-Resolution Microscopy
Abstract
Fluorescence microscopy is one of the most widely used tools in biological research, allowing us to visualize the organization of cells and their molecular components. Over the past two decades, the development of super-resolution microscopy has revolutionized the field by making it possible to visualize structures far smaller than previously thought possible with light microscopy.
My research combines these advanced imaging techniques with tools from DNA nanotechnology to further expand what we can see and measure inside cells. In this presentation, I will introduce recent developments in DNA-based super-resolution microscopy and show how these approaches can enable high-resolution imaging of many different molecular targets within the same sample, and discuss how these technologies can be used to address biological questions at the molecular scale.
About the speaker
Florian Schueder studied Physics at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and the Wyss Institute at Harvard University from 2009 to 2015. He then pursued a Ph.D. in Biophysics at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry from 2015 to 2020. From 2021 to 2025, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Cell Biology and the Department of Microbial Pathogenesis at Yale School of Medicine. In 2025, he was a Visiting Scientist at ETH Zurich. In 2026, Florian started his own lab as an Assistant Professor in the School of Life Sciences at EPFL.
Program:
- 17:15 - 17:25 Introduction by the Dean and Director GHI
- 17:25 - 17:55 Prof. Paloma Navarro
- 18:00 - 18:10 Introduction by the Dean and Director IBI
- 18:10 - 18:40 Prof. Florian Schüder
- 18:40 - 18:45 Closure
- 18:45 Apéritif in SV Hall
Registration: Click here
============================================
Prof. Paloma Navarro
Engineering Precision Immunotherapies for the Aging Brain
Abstract
As we age, our brains slowly change memory can falter, thinking can slow, and the risk of diseases like Alzheimer's rises. For decades, aging research has focused on the brain's own cells. But our bodies also carry a second, powerful system that changes with age: the immune system. Best known for fighting infections, the immune system also reaches into the brain and helps shape how it works. My research aims to answer a simple but underexplored question: as the immune system ages, does it stop protecting the brain and start harming it, and if so, can we intervene?
I will share how I have used engineered proteins, delivered directly into the brain, to precisely target specific immune cells and rebalance their behavior. Building on this work, my lab is now developing a toolkit of precision tools, each aimed at a different brain immune cell type. The goal is to translate this work into "aging immunotherapies": treatments that restore balance to the aging immune system, strengthen the brain's resilience, and reduce the risk of neurodegenerative disease.
About the speaker
Paloma Navarro Negredo studied Natural Sciences with an emphasis in Pharmacology at St John's College, University of Cambridge, before earning her Master's and PhD in Clinical Biochemistry, also at Cambridge. In the laboratory of Prof. Margaret S. Robinson she studied how proteins are sorted and trafficked inside cells. She then moved to Stanford University for postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Prof. Anne Brunet, supported by a Human Frontier Science Program fellowship. At Stanford she investigated changes in the aging brain, with a particular focus on immune cells and strategies to target them using engineered proteins.
Paloma is now an Assistant Professor at the School of Life Sciences at EPFL, where she leads a research group investigating how the aging immune system contributes to the decline of brain function.
============================================
Prof. Florian Schüder
Programming DNA for Multiplexed Super-Resolution Microscopy
Abstract
Fluorescence microscopy is one of the most widely used tools in biological research, allowing us to visualize the organization of cells and their molecular components. Over the past two decades, the development of super-resolution microscopy has revolutionized the field by making it possible to visualize structures far smaller than previously thought possible with light microscopy.
My research combines these advanced imaging techniques with tools from DNA nanotechnology to further expand what we can see and measure inside cells. In this presentation, I will introduce recent developments in DNA-based super-resolution microscopy and show how these approaches can enable high-resolution imaging of many different molecular targets within the same sample, and discuss how these technologies can be used to address biological questions at the molecular scale.
About the speaker
Florian Schueder studied Physics at Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and the Wyss Institute at Harvard University from 2009 to 2015. He then pursued a Ph.D. in Biophysics at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry from 2015 to 2020. From 2021 to 2025, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Cell Biology and the Department of Microbial Pathogenesis at Yale School of Medicine. In 2025, he was a Visiting Scientist at ETH Zurich. In 2026, Florian started his own lab as an Assistant Professor in the School of Life Sciences at EPFL.
Practical information
- General public
- Free
Organizer
- SV-DO