Elsa Pellet

Elsa Pellet

After a master in life sciences at the EPF in Lausanne, Switzerland, I wanted to keep working in an interdisciplinary field, so I chose to do a Ph.D. (or, more exactly, a Dr. rer. nat.) in systems immunology. Working in two labs, one theoretical, the other experimental, allowed me to combine an experimental approach to a modelling approach, and to learn how to integrate the two aspects of biological research. The combination of experimental and computational work is important, and communication difficulties between the two fields are a non-negligible impairment in biological research. My position at the intersection of both fields allows me to reduce those difficulties by understanding both the data requirement of system biologists, the experimental needs of experimentalists, and by being able to explain mathematical models in biological terms and biological restrictions in practical terms.