Hello! 

My name is Burhan, and I am very happy to start my PhD studies in Christian Fankhauser’s team ! 

Previously, I did my bachelor’s in molecular biology and genetics at Boğaziçi University in Istanbul, where I come from. Then, I completed my master studies in the lab of Luis Lopez-Molina in the University of Geneva, studying the seed coat anatomy in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Here, I will continue to work on Arabidopsis, focusing on the regulation of air channel formation in their hypocotyl. 

I also like cooking, playing basketball, and birdwatching. 

I am looking forward to meeting you all!

Hi, everyone! I am Olivier Messina, a French biologist with an interest in understanding the relationship between 3D genome organization and transcription. I completed my PhD in Marcelo Nollmann’s lab in Montpellier, France (2019–2024), focusing on the fascinating field of chromatin architecture. During my doctoral research, I contributed to the development of HiM, a microscopy technique designed to trace chromatin architecture across different cell types. I applied HiM to investigate chromatin folding, particularly the communication between cis-regulatory elements in the regulation of gene expression during early Drosophila embryogenesis and in the Drosophila brain. Additionally, I adapted HiM in combination with sophisticated bioinformatics methods to explore chromosome architecture and transcription at the single-cell level in mouse and human tissues. 

I joined Maria Cristina Gambetta’s lab in January 2025 as a postdoctoral researcher, where I will be studying the regulatory role of long-range chromatin interactions between promoter pairs in fully differentiated Drosophila neurons using microscopy- and sequencing-based methods (Hi-C, Micro-C).