People

Rodrigo Reis (PI)

Rodrigo is originally from Brazil with a PhD in Plant Molecular Biology from the University of Sydney, Australia. After a postdoc in the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, he was granted an Eccellenza Assistant Professorship position to join the University of Bern, where he leads efforts to understand how plants perceive and adapt to elevated temperatures, with a focus on post-transcriptional regulation and RNA structure.

Keywords: post-transcriptional regulation; RNA structure; thermomorphogenesis

Contact: rodrigo.reis at unibe.ch

Dolly Mehta (Postdoc, Her)

Dolly completed her PhD from the National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS), India, where she studied RNA-mediated mechanisms of gene regulation in bacteria. Continuing her interest in structured RNAs, she has joined the lab as a postdoc to discover functional RNA structures in plants using cutting-edge computational approaches.

Keywords: RNA structure and function; RNA family; machine learning; RNA-protein interaction; regulatory RNA

Contact: dolly.mehta at unibe.ch

Chen Xiao (Postdoc)

Chen earned her Master’s degree from China Agricultural University (Beijing) with specialisation on horticultural genetics and molecular breeding. She then completed a PhD at Hong Kong Baptist University working on mechanistic understanding of plant-specific mRNA capping process. She joined the lab as a postdoc to explore transient RNA structural changes in post-transcriptional regulation, focused on RNA-protein interaction. 

Keywords: RNA structures, RNA binding protein, posttranscriptional regulation

Contact: chen.xiao at unibe.ch

Jingmin (PhD candidate)

Jingmin obtained her BSc in Ecology from Lanzhou University. She then moved to Hong Kong and obtained her MPhil in plant molecular biology from the Hong Kong Baptist University, where she worked on RNA capping process in Arabidopsis. Jingmin joined the lab as a PhD student, where she continues in her field of interest—RNA biology— studying RNA structure and posttranscriptional regulation in plant adaptation.  

Keywords: RNA structure; RNA metabolism; thermomorphogenesis; RNA modifications; translational regulation.

Contact: jingmin.hua at unibe.ch

Shitij Gupta (PhD candidate)

Shitij comes from India, where he obtained his master’s degree in Plant Molecular Biology and Biotechnology from the University of Delhi. Since then, he has been a research fellow under the coveted CSIR-NET junior research fellowship offered by the Indian government. He joined the lab as a PhD student working on the facets of RNA structure-mediated adaptation in plants. Shitij is a recipient of the prestigious Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship.

Keywords: RNA Biology; HSFs; Arabidopsis; Structutal and Functional Genomics; Thermomorphogenesis; Computational Biology

Contact: shitij.gupta at unibe.ch

Dominique Vuarambon (PhD Candidate)

Dominique moved from Argentina to Switzerland to obtain her Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Biology and Molecular Life Sciences from the University of Lausanne (UniL). After that, as a research assistant in Yves Poirier’s group at UniL, she worked on long non-coding RNAs, among other projects. After positions in biopharma consulting (Germany) and MedTech (Switzerland), she joined the lab as a PhD candidate to study functional RNA structures in plant adaptation.

Keywords: RNA structure, genome-wide transcriptomics, functional analysis, evolution, thermomorphogenesis, bioinformatics.

Contact: dominique.vuarambon at unibe.ch

Lázara Aline Simões Silva (Visiting PhD student)

Lázara is a Brazilian PhD student, visiting our lab for one year as a recipient of the prestigious Swiss Government Excellence Scholarship. In the Federal University of Viçosa, Brazil, Lázara studies phase changes in plant development using markers such as microRNAs. In our group, she applies single cell imaging tools to study the localisation of mRNAs associated with plant response to warm temperatures.

Keywords: Thermomorphogenesis, posttranscriptional regulation, RNA structure, smFISH

Contact: lazara.simoessilva at unibe.ch / lazara.silva at ufv.br

Borys Leon Alcivar (Visiting PhD student)

Borys is an Ecuadorian PhD student in Plant Physiology at the Federal University of Viçosa, Brazil, where he studies G protein signalling. In our group, he studies the function of conserved RNA structures in plant response to environmental cues.

Keywords: RNA structure, RNA regulation, thermomorphogenesis, plant adaptation

Contact: borys.leon at ufv.br