Viola Vogel facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Viola Vogel
|
|
|---|---|
| Born | 1959 (age 65–66) |
| Citizenship |  Germany |
| Education | Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry |
| Awards | Philip Morris Research Award (2005) Julius Springer Award (2006) NAE Member (2020) NAS Member (2021) |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | biophysics bioengineering |
| Institutions | University of Washington (1990-2003) ETH Zürich (2004-) |
| Doctoral advisor | Hans Kuhn |
Viola Vogel (born 1959) is a German scientist. She is a biophysicist and bioengineer. This means she studies how physics works in living things. She also uses engineering to solve problems in biology and medicine. She is a professor at ETH Zürich in Switzerland. There, she leads a lab that studies how forces affect living cells.
About Viola Vogel
Viola Vogel was born in 1959 in Tübingen, a university town in Germany. She showed great talent in science from a young age. In 1988, she won an important award called the Otto Hahn Medal. She earned this for her PhD work at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry.
After her studies, she moved to the United States. She worked at the University of California, Berkeley for two years. In 1990, she joined the University of Washington in Seattle. There, she helped start a new program in molecular bioengineering. This field combines biology, engineering, and tiny molecules.
From 1997 to 2003, she was the first director of the Center for Nanotechnology at the University of Washington. Nanotechnology is about working with extremely small things. In 2004, she moved back to Switzerland. She became a professor at ETH Zürich. Later, she helped create the Department of Health Sciences and Technology there.
Since 2015, she has been part of the Wyss Translational Center in Zürich. This center helps turn new scientific discoveries into real-world solutions. She also works with the Berlin Institute of Health in Germany.
Her Scientific Discoveries
Viola Vogel's research focuses on how tiny parts of living tissue work. She studies their mechanical properties. This means she looks at how they respond to forces like stretching or pushing. Her goal is to use this knowledge to create new technologies.
She is very interested in how molecules build themselves into structures. She also studies how cells stick to each other. Another area of her work is how living things create materials like bone.
Her most important discoveries are about proteins. She found out that when proteins are stretched, their function can change. She also learned how cells feel and react to forces. These discoveries are very important for many areas. They help us understand how stem cells change into different types of cells. They also explain how tissues grow and repair themselves. Her work helps us learn about how blood vessels form and how cancer develops.
Awards and Honors
Viola Vogel has received many awards for her important work. In 2005, she won the Philip Morris Research Award. The next year, in 2006, she shared the Julius Springer Award for Applied Physics.
She has also been recognized by major science groups. In 2018, she became a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. In 2020, she was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering. The next year, in 2021, she joined the US National Academy of Sciences. These are very high honors for scientists. In 2023, she was also made an International Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in the UK.
