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June 23, 2026
We are happy to welcome McKenzie Powers, as a new PhD student in the Moran’s lab, to our network! In her project she will investigate the interactions between marine phytoplankton and heterotrophic bacteria, and how these relationships shape the cycling of organic matter in the ocean. Combining lab- and field-based approaches with omics tools, she […]
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June 17, 2026
Congratulations to Harish on successfully defending his PhD thesis!👏🎉👨🎓 Harish joined PriME three years ago as a PhD student in Terry Hwa’s lab. His research focuses on understanding emergent behavior and pattern formation in dense microbial communities. During his PhD, he investigated the spatiotemporal dynamics of bacterial colony development, shedding light on the processes […]
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April 15, 2026
We welcome Dieter Baumgartner, who recently joined the Orphan Lab as a Postdoc, to the PriME community! Many in PriME will already know Dieter from his time in the Stocker Lab, and we’re happy to see him now joining the PriME network — bringing his expertise to the West Coast. Dieter’s work sits at the […]
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March 24, 2026
We say goodbye to Jonasz, a long-term member of the PriME community who has been part of the program since its early days. Jonasz has now started a new position as Assistant Professor at the University of Warsaw, where he will lead his Bioencounters lab. His research will explore contact-dependent interactions in microorganisms and beyond, […]
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March 9, 2026
On March 9, the PriME members in Zurich gathered at ETH for the PriME Mini-Symposium – an afternoon of scientific exchange, discussion, networking, and good vibes 🤗. The program featured interactive poster sessions as well as a review paper session dedicated to the collaborative PriME review articles currently in preparation. Coffee-fueled networking, a research picture […]
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January 15, 2026
Jeremy joined PriME as a PhD student in the Moran Lab, where he investigated marine bacterial community interactions using novel fitness and chemotaxis assays. He then moved to the West Coast as a Postdoc in the Orphan Lab, using diatom-generated phytoplankton aggregates as a model system to study the colonization dynamics of heterotrophic bacterial communities […]
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November 15, 2025
We are delighted to welcome Richard, who joined PriME this month as a Postdoc in the Hwa Lab at the University of California, San Diego. Richard completed his PhD at UCLA, where he explored horizontal gene transfer and adaptive evolution in human-gut bacteria. In his current work, carried out in collaboration with the Kryazhimskiy Lab, […]
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November 5, 2025
We’re happy to welcome Eliane Ballmer, who joined PriME this month as a PhD student in the Stocker group. Eliane holds a background in Environmental Sciences with a specialization in Biogeochemistry and Pollutant Dynamics. Her scientific curiosity lies at the intersection of chemistry and microbiology — exploring how microbial processes shape the ocean’s carbon cycle […]
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November 3, 2025
We gathered once again in New York City from October 27–29, 2025, for three days of stimulating discussions, ideas, and collaboration at the Simons Foundation (SF). This year’s program featured four scientific sessions spanning behavior and metabolism, microbes on particles, community dynamics, and diatom–bacteria interactions, along with lively poster sessions showcasing ongoing and future research. […]
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August 11, 2025
PriME Dr. #5 in 2025 is Gabriel 🥳!! Gabriel joined PriME five years ago as a PhD student in Otto Codero’s lab. During his PhD he used genetic tools, computational models and microscopy to understand how metabolic constraints and microbial interactions shape the spatial organization of communities, and vice-versa. He has recently defended his thesis […]
