Cell scientist to watch – Prisca Liberali

ABSTRACT Prisca Liberali studied chemistry at Università degli Studi di Roma ‘La Sapienza’ in Rome, Italy. She then pursued her PhD in physical chemistry, studying membrane dynamics and trafficking with Daniela Corda and Alberto Luini at Fondazioni Mario Negri Sud. Afterwards, Prisca joined Lucas Pelkmans' research group at ETH in Zurich and at the University of Zurich, Switzerland in 2008 for her postdoctoral work on genetic interactions and regulatory networks in membrane trafficking, making use of quantitative biology approaches. In 2015, Prisca became an Assistant Professor at the University of Basel, Switzerland while also starting her own research group at the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research (FMI) in Basel. She was awarded an ERC Starting Grant in 2016 and was selected as an EMBO Young Investigator in 2019. Her lab focuses on the collective characteristics of multicellular systems and how patterning can arise from single-cell properties and behaviour. Her research group uses experimental and theoretical analysis to address the cellular heterogeneity and other relevant questions on stem cell biology and organoid development.