Ralitza Staneva

I did my studies at the Ecole Normale Supérieure where I became fascinated with cell and developmental biology. My research interests became more precisely shaped through several research internships. I discovered tissue homeostasis regulation in the lab of François Schweisguth, where I worked on a Drosophila model of stem cell maintenance regulated by the cell microenvironment. I then wanted to gain more experience in stem cell biology in pathological conditions, such as cancer, by joining the lab of Cédric Blanpain in Brussels. For my PhD, I wanted to combine my previous research experience on tumor aggressiveness with an in vivo imaging approach of cancer invasion. This lead me to the lab of Danijela Matic Vignjevic at Institut Curie for a PhD in which I studied cancer cell migration and interaction with the microenvironment using the mouse intestine as a model. Towards the end of my PhD, I gained interest in quantitative approaches, tissue mechanics and epithelial homeostasis, and therefore I joined the lab of Romain Levayer for my post-doc, to study epithelial homeostasis and cell competition.