Meet Tania Distler, PhD Candidate
Tania grew up in a small village in the northern part of Germany. After high school, she was still undecided on which path to take next, so she travelled to New Zealand for a gap year.
This experience taught her to be less afraid of stepping out of her comfort zone and sparked her love for travelling and learning about other cultures.
More about Tania Distler
Once she returned to Germany, she began her undergraduate studies in Molecular Biotechnology at the University of Heidelberg. During this time, she became very interested in stem cell research and learning how tissues form and regenerate. She therefore decided to join the Master’s program in Regenerative Biology and Medicine at the Technical University of Dresden. With her MSc degree complete, and because she had only experienced academia, Tania was curious about working in industry, and did a one-year internship in early research and development at a pharma company. This experience reinforced her decision to seek a PhD position in a healthcare-related field.
Tania was offered a PhD project in Prof. Alexandre Persat’s lab in the Global Health Institute at EPFL, so she packed her things and headed off to begin her doctoral studies in Lausanne. Tania feels lucky to be working on this doctoral project, which allows her to apply her knowledge in tissue biology to the real-world problem of antimicrobial resistance. In her free time, she enjoys the outdoors, especially going hiking and skiing in the Swiss Alps.