معرفی
Mihaela Zavolan is a Full Professor at the Biozentrum, University of Basel, Switzerland, where she has held continuous faculty appointments since 2003 (Assistant Professor 2003-2008, Associate Professor 2008-2014, Full Professor 2014-present). She simultaneously serves as a Group Leader at the Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics since 2004, directing research on RNA regulatory networks.
Her educational background includes:
- PhD in Computer Science, University of New Mexico (1996-1999)
- M.Sc. in Computer Science, University of New Mexico (1994-1996)
- M.D., University of Medicine and Pharmacy, Timisoara, Romania (1986-1992)
Dr. Zavolan's research centers on computational RNA biology, with pioneering work in microRNA mechanisms, RNA splicing, RNA-binding proteins, and pre-mRNA 3' end processing. Her group integrates advanced computational modeling with high-throughput experimental data to dissect post-transcriptional gene regulation networks. Key methodological contributions include quantitative analysis of CLIP techniques and biophysical models of miRNA-mRNA interactions.
Analysis of her publication record reveals consistent focus on developing and applying computational frameworks for RNA regulatory networks, with increasing emphasis on genome-wide mapping of RNA-protein interactions and quantitative modeling of regulatory dynamics. Her work bridges molecular biology, genomics, and systems biology through innovative algorithm development.
Her major scientific awards include:
- ERC Starting Grant (2012)
- Young Investigator of EURASNET (2006-2009)
- Lita Annenberg Hazen Presidential Fellowship, The Rockefeller University (2001-2003)
- Presidential Fellowship, The Rockefeller University (2001)
- Burroughs Wellcome Fellow, The Rockefeller University (2000)
Dr. Zavolan has secured competitive research funding including the ERC Starting Grant and maintains active grant support through her group leadership positions. She serves on editorial boards of Genome Biology, Bioinformatics, BMC Molecular Biology, and Cells, and has organized major conferences including the European Conference on Computational Biology (2012) and Computational RNA Biology Conference (2014).
She leads parallel research groups at the Biozentrum (Computational and Systems Biology) and Swiss Institute of Bioinformatics (RNA regulatory networks), employing interdisciplinary teams that combine computational biology, molecular biology, and high-throughput data analysis to investigate RNA-mediated gene regulation mechanisms.
