A professor elected as member of EMBO

Monica Gotta, Full Professor in the Department of Cell Physiology and Metabolism and the Centre for Translational Research in Onco-haematology (CRTOH) in the Faculty of Medicine at the UNIGE, has been appointed a member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). Founded in 1964, EMBO is the leading European learned society in molecular biology, whose aim is to promote research in this field and encourage scientific exchange. Monica Gotta joins a community of excellence that includes more than 2,000 researchers in the life sciences, including 91 Nobel Prize winners. In 2008, she won the prestigious EMBO Young Investigators Award.

As a specialist in cell division, Monica Gotta leads a research group studying the mechanisms of symmetrical and asymmetrical division in C. elegans embryos and in human cells, and how defects in these processes affect the development of an organism. To this end, she combines tools of genetics, cell biology, biochemistry and mathematical modelling.

With a PhD from the University of Lausanne, she first worked on chromatin organisation at the Swiss Institute for Experimental Cancer Research (ISREC). She then joined the Wellcome Trust/Cancer Research Gurdon Institute in Cambridge to study the mechanisms of cell polarisation, before becoming an SNSF-funded professor at ETH Zurich. She joined the UNIGE Faculty of Medicine in 2008, where she worked on asymmetric cell division and the generation of cell diversity. She was promoted to Full Professor in 2014. Monica Gotta is also very involved in promoting young people and women. Since 2018, she has been a member of the SNSF panel awarding "Eccellenza" grants (renamed SNSF Starting Grants). She joined the SNSF Research Council (Biology Division) in 2021 and the Careers Committee in 2022.

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