the sense of team spirit and mutual support. “We used to meet for a ‘constructive cake session,’” she says. “This was a way of combining exercises relating to the lectures with something fun.” The relatively relaxed relationship with the professors is also something that she still remembers fondly. “Although everything was new, and a bit chaotic at times, we were accepted and integrated wherever we went and also enjoyed a great deal of freedom.” A focus on chemistry and biology From the outset, she was primarily interested in questions relating to chemistry and biology. With that in mind, she completed her master’s thesis on tissue engineering in the group led by Professor Ivan Martin, head of the De- partment of Biomedicine at the University of Basel. Since then, she hasn’t lost her interest in — or fascination with — the production of arti昀椀cial tissue. Whereas her master’s thesis explored methods for cultur- ing cartilage in the laboratory, her subsequent doctoral Supervising students from different disciplines is one of Géraldine dissertation at the University of Bern focused on muscle Guex’s core tasks. cells. “We developed a matrix that was suitable for using mesenchymal stem cells originating from the bone mar- row as an implant following a heart attack,” says Géral- dine. She continued this research for another year as a orientation of cells within a hydrogel. In another area of postdoc at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials research, Géraldine looked at the mechanical simulation Science and Technology (Empa) and then spent two years of certain cells in the immune system (macrophages) and studying conductive polymers for bone tissue engineer- stem cells from the bone marrow. This work primarily ing at Imperial College London as part of an SNSF Swiss entailed using in vitro models to examine how exercise Postdoctoral Fellowship. a昀昀ects the healing process following a bone fracture, for example. “I learned to communicate with Returning to Basel as an endowed professor experts from very di昀昀erent disciplines Despite choosing to study the nanosciences instead of and to respect and bene昀椀t from medicine, Géraldine has subsequently turned her atten- di昀昀erent ideas.” tion to medical topics over the course of her career. Ac- cordingly, the obvious next step was to continue in this Prof. Géraldine Guex vein. In 2022, she therefore applied to the University of University Center of Dental Medicine Basel (UZB) Basel for an assistant professorship in oral implantology sponsored by the Basel entrepreneur and honorary doc- tor Thomas Straumann. She ultimately prevailed over her competitors and took up the professorship at the Univer- Various methods for better healing sity Center for Dental Medicine Basel (UZB) in April 2023. After two years in London, Géraldine returned to Empa to research antibacterial wound dressings. There, her “Basel is, of course, very attractive as a city — and bioma- investigations focused on various peptides and gallium terials and tissue engineering are subject areas that I’ve complexes as potential active substances for tackling been working on for years. Although I had no previous bacterial infections. In collaboration with the Laboratory links with dental medicine, I’m very familiar with organ- of Organic Electronics at Linköping University, she also ic and inorganic materials and the biological principles evaluated a controlled proton pump that can be used to needed for the projects,” says Géraldine Guex. precisely regulate the pH value in wounds and thus to achieve an ideal, slightly acidic environment for wound Setting up a group healing. Géraldine is currently supervising a master’s student and two doctoral students from the 昀椀eld of dental medicine, For Géraldine, this was followed by three years as a re- but the group will continue to grow. For example, she is search scientist at the AO Research Institute in Davos, now in a position to take on a doctoral student, a biology where she worked with the start-up mimiX and investigat- lab technician and a postdoc. With this team, Géraldine ed how acoustic waves in昀氀uence the three-dimensional hopes to develop complex, three-dimensional in vitro SNI INSight December 2023 15