Visionary talent

“During my bachelor’s training, I became fascinated with how neurons work in ensembles to essentially make us who we are,” says Hannah Stabb, a neuroscientist who began her Ph.D. training in 2023 at the Institute of Molecular and Clinical Ophthalmology Basel (IOB). “I was always interested in fundamental questions like, what is the nature of intelligence and how can I develop a computational model for the mechanisms behind how we think?” says Junjie Huang, another recently joined student of the IOB’s Ph.D. program who left his home in Beijing, China, to train here in Basel. These are the voices of the young scientists who come from around the world to pursue their doctoral training in the IOB’s Ph.D. program in Translational Visual Neurosciences. Each of these students has come to the IOB for the unique opportunities offered by the institute – namely its groundbreaking advances and rare blend of both fundamental research on eye diseases and the application of those insights to the development of new medicines to treat those diseases. Although the Ph.D. program is only a few years old, the student body has been steadily growing. It has so far attracted over 20 students of 18 different nationalities, including students from Europe, North America, Asia, and Africa. Many of these students have been drawn to the IOB by the institute’s field-leading research, the reputation of the institute’s faculty, and the one-of-a-kind education offered by the program. “The uniqueness of our program lies in providing students with both practical and theoretical immersion in modern approaches to translational ophthalmology,” says Lobna Maaroufi, who coordinates the Ph.D. program. “Our program strives to bridge the gap between basic research and clinical applications in visual neuroscience – and so do the Ph.D. candidates who join us.” An uncommon blend The IOB itself was created in 2018 by the University of Basel, the University Hospital Basel, and Novartis to advance basic eye disease research and develop innovative therapies to restore lost vision. With all of the liberties of an academic institution, the IOB officially launched its Ph.D. program in 2022 to train the field’s next generation of researchers. “The program’s title, Translational visual neurosciences, refers to the field of research aiming to bridge the gap between basic scientific knowledge about the visual system and practical applications for improving human vision or treating visual disorders,” says Maaroufi. “Research at the IOB covers the entire spectrum of vision research, from basic science to patient-oriented clinical research, and we are aware of only two or three other institutes that offer such a blend of basic research and clinical application in ophthalmology.” In ophthalmology and most other specializations, basic and clinical research are often kept separate due to the vast expertise needed by each field. But there has been a growing realization that closer collaboration between these specialties can guide more patient-centric research and spark innovation. “It’s so important for clinicians and scientists to collaborate closely to improve patients’ quality of life,” says Jay Zoellin, a self-described aspiring physician-scientist who began his Ph.D. at the IOB in 2024. “This is one of the aspects that drew me to the IOB.”

The IOB’s Ph.D. program also welcomes early-career medical doctors who wish to obtain a research degree, and Zoellin received his M.D. in 2024 from the University of Zurich. Zoellin has been determined to pursue both an M.D. and a Ph.D. since he started his training and he has been fascinated by the eye since he took a clinical elective in ophthalmology at medical school. All IOB students are officially enrolled at the University of Basel, where they have access to the university’s full catalogue of courses in addition to the specific training they receive through the IOB. The IOB’s groups and platforms combine insights from neuroscience, ophthalmology, genetics, molecular biology, protein engineering, cell biology, biomedical engineering, data science, mathematics, and computational biology, as well as preclinical and clinical drug development. “I was intrigued by the really well-planned, methodological research happening at the IOB, and the computational and mathematical aspects seemed like an important complement to the clinical setting,” says Zoellin. “This was something I wanted to be a part of.” Attracting talent The high-impact research of the IOB staff is another aspect that brings many students to the program. “Botond Roska is quite famous for his pioneering research in optogenetic vision restoration,” says Hannah Stabb, the student who came to neuroscience to understand how neuronal networks form our character. Although Stabb originally learned about Roska’s research through her master’s program at the University College of London, she also heard his name often in the media of their shared home country, Hungary. “Everyone in Hungary is very proud of him and, during my master’s, I followed his papers, and I knew of his reputation as a good supervisor,” Stabb says. “I knew that I wanted to come to his lab.”

Junjie Huang, the student interested in computational models of thought, was also drawn to join the program by the research of one of the IOB group leaders. While Huang was pursuing a degree in math and physics at the Tsinghua University in Beijing, he was fascinated by the summer school presentation of a visiting professor. This professor was Rava Azeredo da Silveira, the leader of the IOB’s Theoretical and Computational Neuroscience Group and now also Huang’s Ph.D. mentor. Although they joined different labs, Stabb and Huang are working on a shared topic, which is the mechanism behind how a special class of neurons, called head direction neurons, compute orientation. Consistent with the IOB’s interdisciplinary expertise, Stabb and Huang are tackling their projects with quite different, yet complementary approaches.

Junjie Huang.

“Our projects are deeply connected,” says Huang. “On Hannah’s side, their focus is the experimental and molecular lab work, and then in da Silveira’s group, we develop theories and models to explain the lab results and also to make new predictions that they can test to see if our predictions are correct.” “In many of the other Ph.D. programs where I applied, I would have had one project limited to one field, but I was really seeking an interdisciplinary view on science,” adds Stabb. “Here at IOB, we have everything available for doing interdisciplinary research.” Winning recognition Besides the unique research opportunities, interdisciplinary methodology, and reputations of the IOB’s group leaders, the IOB has also gained recognition through the earliest graduates of its Ph.D. program. “Our former Ph.D. student, Dasha Nelidova, developed an innovative technology that could potentially pave the way for restoring central vision in patients blinded by macular degeneration,” says Maaroufi. Nelidova was jointly a graduate of the IOB and the Friedrich Miescher Institute for Biomedical Research, also in Basel, where Botond Roska held a position before creating the IOB. Her research has already earned 25 international awards, including the Pfizer Research Prize 2021, one of the most prestigious biomedical research awards for early-career scientists in Switzerland. “I am really excited to see if we can get to a point where my research could be translated into the clinic – that would be incredible, but it’s still a bit far,” says Stabb, who is also working on a project to restore color vision. “I think it is always important to keep in mind that if you’re doing biomedical research, one of the ultimate goals, if not the ultimate goal, is of course always to improve quality of life for patients,” adds Zoellin.