Team

Prof Navarini is the head of the dermatology and allergy clinic at the University Hospital of Basel. As an longstanding immunologist, his main interest is the investigation of inflammatory skin disease. 

Many dermatological diseases affect the tissue thermal properties and therefore the skin surface temperature. 

Our skin is a barrier that effectively protects us from environmental insults such as ultraviolet radiation, chemicals or infectious agents.

Rishika Agarwal is working on developing organoids obtained from the skin epidermis.

Organoids are a collection of organ-specific cells that develop from stem cells or organ progenitors and are capable of recapitulating specific functions of the organ.

Álvaro González-Jimenez is a Ph.D. student under Prof. Alexander Navarini and Prof. Marc Pouly. He works on the foundation of deep generative models and their application for detecting and localizing anomalies in skin images in data scarcity scenarios.

Mrs Tanja Dittmar is the laboratory technician in the SkinBio Lab. She is a professional with more than 20 years of experience with all essential lab techniques needed for cell biology, biochemistry, immunology and molecular biology experiments. 

Barbara Erni is an advanced resident in dermatology. She is currently investigating the role of AI-driven teledermatology in diagnosing common pediatric skin diseases and skin neglected tropical diseases in low resource settings.

Jane Olivia Fröhlich is focused on advancing the skin epidermis organoid model by incorporating immune cells. Skin epidermis organoids, derived from stem cells or organ progenitors, are three-dimensional structures that mimic the organization and function of the epidermal layer of the skin.

Fabian Gröger is a Ph.D. student under Prof. Alexander Navarini and Prof. Marc Pouly. He works on data-centric machine learning research and foundations of representation learning. Especially targeted towards their application for digital dermatology.

Elisabeth Gössinger is an advanced dermatology resident and clinician scientist. Her research primarily focuses on image-based artificial intelligence applications in dermatology, particularly in the field of dermato-oncology and inflammatory dermatoses.

Alina Müller is a clinician-scientist who is active both as a deputy senior physician and in research. Her clinical and scientific focus is in the area of dermato-oncology, where she conducts clinical research in the field of artificial intelligence, primarily for the early detection of melanoma, as well as translational research to optimise the treatment of non-melanoma skin cancer. Another area of research is melanocyte biology and skin pigmentation.

Erika Parente is dedicated to enhancing the skin epidermis organoid model by incorporating neutrophils. Skin epidermis organoids are sophisticated three-dimensional constructs derived from stem cells or organ progenitors, closely mimicking the structure and function of the skin's epidermal layer.

Benjamin Pohl, is a dermatology resident who is currently researching topical treatments for neglected tropical diseases such as cutaneous leishmaniasis.

Additionally, he is focusing on research related to atopic dermatitis.

Karolina is a Senior Dermatology Specialist at the University Hospital of Basel, specializing in hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) and focused on building a dedicated cohort of HS patients. 

Barbara is a highly experienced laboratory technician in charge of setting up raw reagents of our patch testing unit. She has extensive know-how in all things immunohistochemistry and scans our dermatopathology slides for in silico analyses.

Dr Christophe Hsu, MD works with professor Navarini, MD-PhD at the University of Basel. He is an editor in both the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology (JAAD) and the Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology (JEADV). 

David is a clinically oriented resident interested in cutting-edge therapies. We pursue the approach of measuring cytokine expression in biopsies of patients with inflammatory skin conditions, using RT-PRC and immunohistochemistry. 

Dry skin is a huge worldwide problem that was largely neglected in both dermatology and geriatrics, even though more than 70% of the elderly suffer from it. It produces intense pruritus and eczema and must be addressed by application of moisturizers. 

Mathias is a clinical trial specialist with extensive experience in psoriasis and hidradenitis suppurativa. He is also involved in our psoriasis clinic and cares for a large cohort of patients treated with the full range of systemic therapies. He is GCP trained and a specialist for meticulous documentation.

Tamsyn is the lead of the study team. She has helped organize our concluded and running investigator-initiated trials (IIT) including pyoderma gangrenosum and canakinumab, chronic urticarial and canakinumab, as well as a new multicentric IIT for scalp psoriasis that will start very soon.

Antonios is an advanced resident in clinical immunology and allergology. He is board certified in Dermatology. His various project include an investigator initiated trial with a new biologic (IL1beta-antagonist canakinumab) that he showed to be highly effective in pyoderma gangrenosum.

Sarah has analysed patients affected by Winkelmann’s solid facial oedema and just performed a review of the literature in regard to treatment of this rare and disfiguring condition.

Paradoxical psoriasis is a mysterious inflammatory skin disease that arises in up to 2% of patients treated with antagonists to TNF alpha. Cornelia has focused on the phenotypic and expression patterns of this condition in her MD thesis.

Martina’s thesis is focused on the identification of rare damaging variants in two patients with a peculiar form of photodistributed skin inflammation. She analyses whole exome sequencing data of both patients and their family members to identify causal driving factors.

Dennis is an interdisciplinary resident of the departments of Immunology an Dermatology currently working on a prospective study with the aim to generate an artificial intelligence (AI) mobile phone application that will be able to detect acne skin lesions through machine learning.

Katja has quickly become a sebocyte specialist, taking some of our findings in a recent genome-wide association study on severe acne to the functional level. 

Dr Roberta Vasconcelos-Berg is the head of the Department of Aesthetic Dermatology. She is a trained dermatologist from Brazil and runs the clinic with vast knowledge and rich experience in her field. 

Rebecca is an advanced PhD student, MSc (Trinity College, Dublin). Her expertise is generating whole exome sequencing datasets of human samples and using linux-based bioinformatics to analyze them. 

Petra is the lead of the patch testing unit and takes care of our patients during the whole process. She has extensive experience in evaluating the relevance of identified contact allergies.

Inès integrated the dermatology laboratory in January 2022 as a PhD student. She is working on inflammatory immune-mediated diseases (psoriasis and rosacea) and the main goal is to understand the exact role of keratinocytes and their contribution in these diseases. 

Moritz works in our vision team. He is focused on three-dimensional image reconstruction, using a wealth of clinical pictures collected by our clinician team members. 

Carla is an experienced board certified dermatologist building up a cohort of several hundred rosacea patients at our hospital. She is interested in the mechanism of inflammation in pustular rosacea.

Eva is our long-standing and highly experienced organizer of the diagnostic laboratory and in charge of patient management and all testing procedures.

Julia is together with Tamsyn our essential person for clinical trial management. She ensures smooth running of our trials, keeps us meeting deadlines and is involved in negotiations with our partners for clinical trials.

Jasmin is the new study coordinator and involved in organizing our clinical trials in the inflammatory dermatoses team.

Anna is currently working on the development of innovative, enhanced forms of treatment that improve compliance in patients with chronic itching.

Nowadays, moisturizers belong to the most popular cosmetic products. According to Prof. Dr. Navarini, however, the human skin is able to moisturize itself. Thus, there shouldn’t be any biological reasons for the application of moisturizers.

Neutrophil granulocytes are the first cells to arrive at the site of an infection or injury. Using different strategies like phagocytosis, reactive oxygen or nitrogen species, antimicrobial peptides or NETs formation neutrophils clear an infection in a short period of time.

Wrinkles and pigmentation disorders are not only relevant in scientific research but also have an impact on the lives of everyday people. In the general public many myths, curious home remedies and wrong treatment approaches that can be harmful are circulating.

Manuel is taking a closer look at hidradenitis suppurativa (HS) and the patients’ questions on this highly burdensome disease. He is working on an online chat bot to provide answers and collect usage data.

My research focus is the phenotypical presentation and genetic mutations in patients with pustular psoriasis. This project includes patients with pustular psoriasis from various dermatological centres in Egypt.

Assistant lecturer of Public health and community medicine.

Atopic dermatitis is a chronic or chronically relapsing skin disease, which can already occur during infancy. Due to this, patients have many questions about the symptoms, diagnosis or therapy. 

Häufig ist es Patientinnen und Patienten unangenehm, bei Veränderungen im Intimbereich oder nach sexuellen Risikokontakten einen Arzt zu konsultieren. 

For her doctor thesis Elvira is evolving a tree diagram including questions and pictures for a chatbot with the purpose to inform, aid and guide patients with dermatologic issues in general.

Rino is working in our chatbot team getting computers to find the right words to communicate with patients and recognizing psoriasis on their images. 

The dermatologists uses many comparatively simple diagnostic procedures in his tradecraft. These tests are not widely used in the circle of general practitioners and medical assistants as a result of an education mostly focused on theoretical aspects.

Rosacea is a widespread disease. Rahel is creating a Chatbot which helps patients to learn more details about their disease and supports them by searching an adequate treatment.

Discomfort in the genital area is not only very restricting for women, it can turn into threatening conditions. Out of shame, consulting a doctor represents a burden to many.

Adhideb is a PhD student trained in Bonn (Germany) for a MSc in Biotechnology and Pharmaceutics. He is an advanced linux, R and Python bioinformatician. 

A specialist in diagnosis and treatment of psoriasis, the advanced resident recently published a large trial demonstrating phototherapy of UVB narrowband to be equally effective as the traditional combination with UVA.

Florian Anzengruber is an advanced resident in dermatology with an academic outlook. He is part of our genetics team. Currently, his main project is collecting and characterizing cohorts of neutrophil-mediated inflammatory dermatoses (NMID).

Danaëlle is devising a questionnaire for a chatbot that aims to inform and support patients suffering from warts (verrucae). The chatbot particularly elucidates the numerous available therapy options.

Nowadays, medical consultations are associated with rising costs for our society and time expenditure for our patients. With the current state of technology, there open up new opportunities to optimize these processes.

Ji is currently a master student, registered in University Freiburg(Germany) for MSc in Computer Science. Her study and practical works are focused on Machine Learning. Besides, she has also experiences in software development.

Ludovic graduated at ETH and EPFL in computer science. He applies machine learning, deep learning and artificial intelligence to develop decision support systems for dermatologists, harnessing complex medical data in all its forms.