Virginie Fruh’s CV

Virginie Früh was born in Lausanne, Switzerland, on the 22nd of April, 1978.  At the age of 9 months she was brought to travel the world with her parents, where she attended international schools in Manila, Jakarta, and Sri Lanka. After obtaining her International Baccalaureate in Colombo, she studied Biology at the University of Lausanne and transferred to complete her Bachelor of Science in Coastal Marine Biology (Scarborough, United Kingdom) in 2001, with a First Class Honours degree.  She carried out several voluntary positions in the tropics, namely on a coral farm in Cebu, Philippines, wiht Dr. Heeger, and with Operation Wallacea in the aim to protect coral reef and fishermen communities.  She met Ayi Ardisastra, co-founder of ekolibrium at Op-Wall, where they promised eachother that one day they would  have their own foundation, aiming at improving the research autonomy of Indonesia and other nations.  She returned to Switzerland to work for a pharmaceutical company for a temporary contract of 5 months, and another of 8 months, where she was responsible of cell culture media development. She continued to apply for PhD positions when Dr. Gregg Siegal and Prof. Ad. IJzerman accepted her as a candidate wat the University of Leiden in the Netherlands. She started her PhD in September 2004 in the aim to adapt the Target Immobilized NMR Screening (TINS) methodology to the challenging membrane proteins such as GPCRs, ion channels, and enzymes. Several collaborations with other academic research groups and industries were established during her PhD project, including the group of Prof. Rob Leurs (LACDR, Amsterdam, Netherlands), Prof. Lukas Tamm and Prof. John Bushweller (University of Virginia, USA), Prof. Jean-Luc Popot (IBPC, France), Dr. Gregg Siegal and Dr. Rob Heetebrij (internal collaboration with ZoBio, Leiden, Netherlands) and Herman Verheil (Pyxis Discoveries, Delft, Netherlands).  Part of the work was presented at the Figon Medicine Days in October 2008, where she was awarded the first prize for the oral presentation. She now has returned to Switzerland where she aims to continue working in the field of biochemistry,  where she has applied for a grant to study environmental microbiology at the EPFL, and to continue work on her association ekolibrium which aims at encouraging and gathering ecological research through the production of documentaries made by the Swiss youth for the Swiss public: the R project.