Sterre van Wierst

About time to put away the Christmas tree....endowed with a DIY phagocytosis ornament💚❤️
Best wishes for the new year :)

Fantastic work! I'm particularly amazed by the switching of phagocytic strategy mid-engulfment when tension is altered.

So far, I am really happy with the Cell and Tissue mechanics research community, with a highlight attending the CellMech meeting in Leuven last week! And Monday I visited NWO Biophysics to explore the Dutch community more in depth. Exciting times ahead!
9/ 🧵

I started working on a PhD project where we aim to improve 3D traction force microscopy to apply it in vivo! Hopefully by the end of my project, we can measure phagocytic forces in the developing zebrafish and learn more about how their tissue architecture contributes to phagocytosis.
8/ 🧵

Back in the Netherlands, I was getting ready to graduate and decided I wanted to do a PhD project in mechanobiology. After careful consideration, I decided to join the group of Daan Vorselen at WUR to work of the biophysics of immune cells! Below an image I made our new confocal system :)
7/🧵

The experience with Zack and Sophie, and the rest of the lab, made a tremendous impact on my science trajectory! I really enjoyed the experience presenting posters and giving a talk at Bay Area conferences. I learned so much in- and outside of the lab and for this I am forever grateful.
6/🧵

Together with Zack, my daily supervisor, we investigated the mechanical properties of bridging fibers during anaphase. Spending the greater part of 2024 in SF, the patience to learn microneedle manipulations paid off and I had lots of fun doing pulls on the anaphase spindle!
5/🧵

I left Paris very inspired and motivated to look for my last MSc thesis project. I ended up choosing to go to UCSF, to the lab of Sophie Dumont, to work on the mechanics of the mitotic spindle!
4/ 🧵

I couldn't get enough of Cell and Tissue Mechanics, so I applied to go to a week-long course at Institut Curie in Paris. The speakers and the science were amazing! I felt very fortunate to be able to visit this as a master's student.
3/ 🧵

This fascination started in 2023, when I was writing a review as an assignment for my master's degree at Utrecht University. In a few weeks, I dove into the literature of mechanobiology with Martijn Gloerich, focusing on its role in cancer progression and metastasis.
2/🧵

Since I've been a bit of a ghost on Bluesky...I thought it would be nice to introduce myself!
I'm Sterre and I am fascinated by emerging physical concepts in biology and the role of the cytoskeleton is this.
1/ 🧵