Serge Ducommun
Postdoc
There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable. There is another theory which states that this has already happened.
During my high-school years, I was particularly interested in physics and astronomy. At that point however I also discovered the appeal of the stochastic and complex nature of biological systems, and so I left my safe haven of mathematically precise observations and decided to study Life Sciences. Although being a biology-heavy curriculum, it also approached many technological challenges in today’s human medicine from an engineering approach. After that, I went on to do my Master’s and doctoral degrees studying cellular energy metabolism and its effect on diseases such as diabetes. For my first postdoctoral project I wanted to expand beyond my previous fields of study and I joined the Ruas lab to study how muscle can adapt to various conditions such as exercise, injury, ageing, or even weightlessness, which allowed me to combine my project with my passion for everything space-flight related.