Dr. Caroline Lustenberger

Junior Group Leader
ETH Zurich
Switzerland

Caroline Lustenberger, PhD is a junior group leader at ETH Zurich (Switzerland), was awarded a SNSF Ambizione career grant in 2019, and is the Chairwoman of the GEF since 2021. Dr. Lustenberger has a Master degree in Exercise Physiology and a PhD in Neuroscience from ETH Zurich. For more than 10 years she has studied brain activity during human sleep and received multiple prestigious fellowship awards to conduct her postdocs at UNC Chapel Hill (USA) and at ETH Zurich.

Dr. Lustenberger’s research centers around the characterization and modulation of brain activity during sleep to promote recovery processes of brain and body across the age and health span. She combines in-lab, mechanistic studies with long-term, real-life experiments using new wearable devices. In one of her newest projects, she seeks to combine this methodology to establish an early detection of Alzheimer’s disease before symptoms arise using wearable and integral approaches that can be deployed at low-cost, everywhere in the world.

Dr. Lustenberger believes open and inclusive exchange among scientists is essential to tear down barriers that hinder gender equality. To facilitate this, she wants to work hand in hand with all taskforce members to identify internal and external barriers and then define an actionable plan to tackle said barriers and make change happen. Listen to her talking about gender equality from the perspective of a female early career researcher.