Viola Lobert

About

I am a cell biologist interested in signaling pathways that are important in development and cancer. I have used a variety of model organisms for my research - zebrafish, fruit flies, mice and mini-organs, so-called organoids. I did my PhD in the laboratory of Professor Harald Stenmark at the Institute for Cancer Research at the Radium hospital, where I worked on the intracellular transport of proteins that reside on the cell's surface. These function as the cell's feet and are essential for a cell to be able to move (they are called integrins). I then became interested in cell polarity, which is one of the aspects that first gets dysregulated in a cancer cell. To study this further I obtained a postdoc stipend from Helse Sør Øst with a stay abroad, which took me to Australia at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute for Medical Research (WEHI) in Melbourne. There I learned how to use the developing intestine of the zebrafish to study colorectal cancer. I came back to Oslo in 2015 and moved on to using human cells in 3D as well as organoids first in the lab of Harald Stenmark, then in the lab of Tor Erik Rusten, where I also performed some experiments in fruit flies. Teaching has become a true passion for me, and I have previously taught developmental biology at the University of Oslo,  cell and molecular biology as well as pathology at Østfold University College, and cell signaling at NTNU. I am thrilled to have the opportunity to teach at OsloMet the Biotechnology KJTS3100 and Molecular and Cell Biology KJM3500 courses, part of the Biotechnology and Applied Chemistry engineering programme.