Irene was born and raised in Switzerland where she studied at ETH Zurich, with the exception of a one year escape to the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. Along the way she became intrigued by the atomic-resolution that structural biology offered to understand how proteins and other biomolecules operate. For her PhD she joined the lab of Frédéric Allain at ETH Zurich where she got hooked on NMR, RNA biology and splicing. After graduating, Irene moved to San Francisco to join Hiten Madhani's lab at UCSF. There she set up a CRISPR-Cas9 base editing system in haploid cells to study splicing using forward genetic screens, supported by fellowships from the Swiss National Science Foundation.

Starting in September 2024, Irene will be an independent junior group leader at the Institute of Molecular Infection Biology at the University of Würzburg.

In her free time, Irene used to try visiting as many of the US national parks as possible to camp there and hike. She is now looking forward to (re-)discovering beautiful spots across Germany and Europe.

I took my first step into academic research by completing a BSc in Biochemistry at Nottingham Trent University. As a part of my studies, I was able to work for 12 months at Wageningen Food Safety and Research (WFSR) in the Netherlands. This experience confirmed my enthusiasm for working in a research lab and trying to uncover the unknown. I further pursued my academic career by obtaining my Master’s degree at the University of Leeds in Infection, Immunity and Human Disease during which I did my MSc thesis in Prof. Jurgen Denecke’s lab, on how SARS-CoV-2 proteins localise within eukaryotic cells. I subsequently moved to Helsinki, Finland to join the Kilpinen research group as a research assistant. There, I honed my experimental and research skills specifically working with iPSC cell villages, planning and executing experiments to help understand the behaviours of different cell lines when cultured together. 

In March 2025 I joined the recently established Beusch research group as a doctoral candidate where I will focus on understanding processes involved in alternative splicing regulation.

I have always been a keen runner and completed the Helsinki half-marathon in 2024. I am also a self-proclaimed saxophone, piano and accordion player and am also teaching myself the Finnish language which is a challenging ordeal.