I joined the lab as a postdoc in 2017. I am interested in the assembly and function of neuronal circuits during human cortical development and I am especially interested in the molecular mechanisms that determine neuronal identity and function. In my work, I am using directed differentiation of human pluripotent stem cells into distinct neuronal subtypes. I am particularly interested in the generation of corticospinal motor neurons central to ALS because generating those neurons holds substantial potential to study ALS in vitro and for cell transplantation therapies. I previously was a postdoc in Rick Livesey’s lab at the University of Cambridge, where I studied neuronal activity and connectivity patterns during human cortical development. I obtained my PhD from the University of Vienna, where I worked in Simon Rumpel’s lab at the IMP, where I studied neuronal activity in the auditory cortex of mice using behavior, gene expression studies and in vivo imaging methods.