Joint CeNS and BioSysteM Workshop Venice

28 Sept 2026, 08:40 → 1 Oct 2026, 18:30 Europe/Berlin

Aula Magna (Venice International University)

This workshop brings together young researchers of the Center for NanoScience (CeNS) and the Excellence cluster BioSysteM with experienced scientists from the fields of physics and (bio)chemistry. The talks of the workshop are intended to give the graduate students and post-doctoral researchers of CeNS and BioSysteM an overview of current research topics on nanometer-scale and molecular design

Monday 28 September

08:40 → 08:50 Boat to San Servolo

09:00 → 09:15 Welcome

09:15 → 09:55 Biomolecular Structures and Machinery from DNA

Speaker: Andrew Turberfield (University of Oxford)

09:55 → 10:35 Synthetic RNA condensates and organelles

Speaker: Lorenzo Di Michele (University of Cambridge)

10:35 → 11:20 Coffee break

11:20 → 12:00 A minimal human ESCRT-III system to mimic HIV-1detachment

Speaker: Patricia Bassereau (Institut Curie)

12:00 → 12:40 Self-organization of the cytoplasm by physical instabilities

Speaker: Jan Brugues (Physics of Life, TU-Dresden)

12:40 → 13:20 Synthetic biology approaches to self-organization across scales

Speaker: Beatrice Ramm (Friedrich Miescher Laboratory)

13:20 → 14:20 Lunch

14:20 → 15:00 Reconstructing biological function with de novo protein design

Speaker: Lukas Milles (LMU Munich / Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry)

15:00 → 15:20 AI-driven optimization of mRNA-LNPs

Speaker: Joschka Müller (LMU Munich)

15:20 → 16:00 Coffee break

16:00 → 16:40 Designed to Assemble—and to Know When

Speaker: Alena Khmelinskaia (LMU Munich)

16:40 → 17:20 Synthetic DNA Alive : from Protein Discovery to Origami Morphing

Speaker: Damien Baigl (ENS Paris)

17:20 → 17:30 Group picture

17:30 → 19:20 Welcome reception

19:20 → 19:30 Boat to San Zaccaria

Tuesday 29 September

08:40 → 08:50 Boat to San Servolo

09:00 → 09:40 Refocusing Mammalian Synbio to Speak the Language of Biology (and improve human health)

Speaker: Ron Weiss (MIT)

09:40 → 10:20 Programmable artificial organelles in mammalian cells

Speaker: Elisa Franco (UCLA)

10:20 → 11:00 Coffee break

11:00 → 11:40 Cell-free immuno-profiling on a genetically programmed biochip

Speaker: Aurore Dupin (University of Bordeaux)

11:40 → 12:20 Decoding Development: How cells can extract precision from noisy signals

Speaker: Marianne Bauer (TU Delft)

12:20 → 12:50 Poster Flash Talks 1

12:50 → 14:50 Poster session I & Lunch break

15:00 → 15:40 Towards programmable living materials and neuro-mechanical control

Speaker: Jörn Dunkel (MIT)

15:40 → 16:20 The Biophysics of Genome Inheritance

Speaker: Iva Tolic (RBI Zagreb)

16:20 → 16:50 Coffee break

16:50 → 17:30 Active emulsions

Speaker: Jean-Francois Joanny (Institut Curie)

17:30 → 18:10 In situ gene editing to rescue severe, monogenic epithelial diseases

Speaker: Sarah Hedtrich (University of British Columbia / LMU Munich)

18:20 → 18:30 Boat to San Zaccaria

Wednesday 30 September

08:40 → 08:50 Boat to San Servolo

09:00 → 09:40 DNA Microscopy - Deciphering biology using DNA reaction networks

Speaker: Björn Högberg (Karolinska Institutet Stockholm)

09:40 → 10:20 Nanoparticles for Drug Delivery and Imaging

Speaker: Neus Feliu (Hamburg University)

10:20 → 11:00 Coffee break

11:00 → 11:40 In vitro reconstitution of mitotic spindle-like microtubule networks

Speaker: Thomas Surrey (Centre for Genomic Regulation Barcelona)

11:40 → 12:20 Engineering biology across scales with cell-free systems

Speaker: Henrike Niederholtmeyer (TU Munich)

12:20 → 13:15 Lunch break

13:15 → 13:55 Emergence as a design principle: chemotaxis, multivalency and supramolecular therapeutics

Speaker: Guiseppe Battaglia (Institute for Bioengineering of Catalonia)

13:55 → 14:35 Magnetic hyperthermia, radiotheranostics, MRI/MPI imaging, and immune cell engineering

Speaker: Teresa Pellegrino (Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia Genoa)

14:50 → 15:10 Boat to San Zaccaria

Thursday 1 October

08:40 → 08:50 Boat to San Servolo

09:00 → 09:40 tba

09:40 → 10:20 Mechanism of vacuole formation in liquid condensates

Speaker: Christoph Weber (University of Augsburg)

10:20 → 11:00 Coffee break

11:00 → 11:40 Building immunity from the bottom-up: Synthetic Cell-Based Tumor Immune Microenvironments

Speaker: Oskar Staufer (Leibniz Institute for New Materials)

11:40 → 12:20 Facilitated displacement based on protein modules

Speaker: Roman Jerala (National Institute of Chemistry, Ljubljana, Slovenia)

12:20 → 12:50 Poster Flash Talks 2

12:50 → 14:50 Poster Session II & Lunch Break

15:00 → 15:20 Dynamic Structural Biology with Vertical Nucleic Acids on Graphene

Speaker: Lars Richter (LMU Munich)

15:20 → 15:50 Designing de novo enzymes with CANVAS

Speaker: Julian Beck (University of Bayreuth)

15:50 → 16:10 Photoactivated Programmable DNA Nanoblocks for Pattern Building Across Scales

Speaker: Svetozar Gavrilovic (MPI of Biochemistry)

16:10 → 16:25 Concluding Remarks

16:50 → 17:00 Boat to San Zaccaria