News
Congratulations to Dr. Larysa Baraban! Appointment to the professorship "Medical Nanotechnology" at the Else Kröner Fresenius Center (EKFZ) for Digital Health
Published on in NEWS
(News based on the press release by Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR), 15 March 2024)
The cfaed congratulates its Associate Member Dr. Larysa Baraban. The researcher from the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) has been appointed by TU Dresden to the professorship "Medical Nanotechnology" at the Else Kröner Fresenius Center (EKFZ) for Digital Health starting May 2024. The Helmholtz Association is supporting this and another new professorship (Kristina Kvashnina) with funding of 200,000 euros per year. The background to this funding is the Helmholtz Association's "Erstberufungsprogramm", which aims to recruit outstanding female researchers for leadership positions at scientific institutions. In 2022, the two scientists, who were awarded an ERC grant, successfully applied for the program, which was launched by the "Pakt für Forschung und Innovation" initiative of the federal and state governments. The funding will now benefit Larysa Baraban and Kristina Kvashnina by not only offering them reliable career prospects in science, but also creating additional scope for the financial organization of their professorships.
Nanoelectronics for individualized cancer therapies
With the title of professor, Larysa Baraban's previous focus at the HZDR remains the same: research into nanotechnologies in the life sciences. Among other things, the 41-year-old physicist has been working for several years on the development of an electronic nanochip that will be used to monitor customized cancer immunotherapies. The researcher's idea is to transfer the biochemical mechanisms that take place in cancer cells to the digital level using bio-nano sensor technology and make them measurable. The data that the nanochip collects in this way should help to find an individually tailored form of therapy for patients. Other microsystems that Larysa Baraban is developing will be used in medical applications such as the cost-effective detection of pathogens and will contribute to the general improvement of diagnostic and monitoring standards for patients in the future. Their research is supported by the EKFZ for Digital Health at the Faculty of Medicine at TU Dresden and Dresden University Hospital. At the direct interface to the medical infrastructure, the center promotes innovative research to advance digitalization in medicine.
Larysa Baraban began her scientific career in her native Ukraine, where she studied physics at the Taras Shevchenko National University in Kyiv. After graduating, she moved to Germany and completed her doctorate in experimental physics at the University of Konstanz. In 2009, she joined a French research team at the École superieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles de la Ville de Paris (ESPCI) and worked on biotechnologies for the first time. Two years later, she moved to the Leibniz Institute for Solid State and Materials Research Dresden to specialize in systems in the nanometer range, and then to TU Dresden. In 2020, Baraban joined the HZDR for the "Nano-microsystems for Life Sciences" research group, which she still heads today and which developed into a separate department at the Institute of Radiopharmaceutical Cancer Research in early 2023.
Further information:
Dr. Larysa Baraban
Institute of Radiopharmaceutical Cancer Research at the HZDR
Life Science Nanomicrosystems
Phone: +49 351 260 3091 | E-Mail: l.baraban@hzdr.de
Read the full version of press release at the HZDR website (German Language)