BIF Fellowship for Emanuele Rovera
Emanuele Rovera, PhD student in the lab of Johannes Zuber, was awarded a competitive fellowship of the Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds. The fellowship will support his doctoral research and make him part of a network of young researchers of exceptional promise.
In its latest award round, the Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds (BIF) selected Emanuele Rovera, a Vienna BioCenter PhD student in the lab of Johannes Zuber, for one of its competitive followships for doctoral students.
Emanuele Rovera studied medicine and graduated with an MD from Turin University in 2022. During medical school, he took part in a 5-year training programme through which he also did research in the lab of Alberto Bardelli, where he studied the response of colorectal tumours to clinically used therapeutics.
“I decided to continue in my scientific training with a PhD after medical school thanks to an internship at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston during summer 2021,” says Rovera. “It was there that I realised that working full-time in research was what excited me the most.”
Rovera joined the lab of Johannes Zuber at the IMP as a Vienna BioCenter PhD student earlier this year, a lab that he describes as the perfect environment to delve deeper into tumour biology and follow his ambition to identify new therapeutic targets in cancer cells.
“My project focuses on understanding the activity and regulation of transcription factors that control the identity of cancer cells, specifically in colorectal cancer.” Rovera will employ functional genetic approaches developed and optimised in the Zuber Lab, such as SLAM-seq coupled with targeted protein degradation and FACS-based, CRISPR/Cas9 screens – methods that allow the detailed manipulation and study of gene expression in cultured cancer cells.
“I am very grateful for the opportunities that the Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds is providing through this fellowship,” says Emanuele Rovera. “The support network and organisational setup will be extremely valuable for my goal of working in a field that ties a clinical perspective into basic research.”
About the BIF PhD Fellowships
The Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds (BIF) awards PhD fellowships of 2 to 3.5 years to outstanding junior scientists worldwide who wish to pursue an ambitious PhD project in basic biomedical research in an internationally leading laboratory.
The peer-review selection process evaluates the applicant's achievements, as well as the scientific quality of the project and host laboratory. The process is highly competitive, with less than 10 percent of applicants receiving a fellowship.
On top of the monthly stipend, the BIF offers fellows seminars, travel allowances, individual and personal support, and access to a worldwide network of fellows and alumni.
Further Reading
Lab of Johannes Zuber
The Vienna BioCenter PhD Programme
Boehringer Ingelheim Fonds