About the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine

 

The Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB) of the University of Luxembourg  is accelerating biomedical research by closing the link between systems biology and medical research. Collaboration between biologists, medical doctors, computer scientists, physicists, engineers and mathematicians is offering new insights in complex systems like cells, organs, and organisms. These insights are essential for understanding principal mechanisms of disease pathogenesis and for developing new tools in diagnostics and therapy.

The LCSB combines experimental and computational approaches to analyse complex biological systems and disease processes with a strong focus on neuropathology including neurodegeneration and epilepsy. The overarching strategy of the interdisciplinary research centre is to combine systematically experimental and theoretical approaches to develop mechanistic disease models.

More information can be found on the LCSB website.

The organisers

Balling1_2009_DHans

Prof. Rudi Balling

Prof. Rudi Balling is the Director of the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine in Luxembourg. He studied nutrition at the Universities of Bonn and Washington State University, USA and received his PhD in Human Nutrition from the University of Aachen, Germany. After completing research posts at the Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute in Toronto, Göttingen and Freiburg, he became Director of the Institute of Mammalian Genetics at the GSF in Munich (1993-2000) and of the Helmholtz Centre of Infection Research in Braunschweig (2001-2009). During this time Rudi Balling has coordinated the German Human Genome Project (1996-2000), the European ESFRI-Project EATRIS (European Advanced Translational Medicine Research Infrastructure) (2008-2010) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Grand Challenges Consortium on the development of Vaccine Animal Models (2005-2009). In 2009, he founded the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine (LCSB), an interdisciplinary Research Centre at the University of Luxembourg dedicated to the analysis of neurodegenerative diseases through computational and system biology oriented approaches. Rudi Balling is member of several Scientific Advisory Boards, amongst others the Excellence Cluster „Inflammation at Interfaces” at the University of Kiel (since 2013, elected chairman since 2014), the RIKEN Center for Integrative Medical Sciences Advisory Council (since 2013) and the Institute of Molecular Genetics (IMG), Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic (since 2013). Since 2015, he coordinates the National Centre of Excellence in Research on Parkinson’s Disease.

Alex Skupin

Dr. Alexander Skupin

Alexander Skupin studied physics at the Humboldt University in Berlin and graduated in 2004 under supervision of Lutz Schimansky-Geier with work on noise-induced effects in neuronal networks. In 2008, he obtained his PhD in theoretical biophysics at the Humboldt University for his interdisciplinary work on calcium signaling with Martin Falcke. After his first postdoc focusing on metabolism with Oliver Ebenhöh at the Max-Planck Institute for Molecular Plant Physiology in Potsdam, he spent 2 years at the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle (USA) where he continued his interdisciplinary work with Aimee Dudley on Systems Genetics, with Sui Huang on cell fate dynamics and with David Galas on information flow in biological systems. In 2014, he started his interdisciplinary “Integrative Cell Signalling” research group at the Luxembourg Centre for Systems Biomedicine where his team combines microscopy and single cell analysis techniques with theoretical concepts from physics to investigate principles of living matter and their implications for health and disease. He is also heading the LCSB imaging platform and is co-coordinator of the CriTICS DTU.