Aurel Leuchtmann

I am originally from Zurich, Switzerland, where I spent much of my childhood and teenage years practicing various sports. This exposure to different training strategies aimed at improving athletic performance sparked my curiosity about how the body adapts to exercise training. After high school, I worked as a personal trainer, leveraging my athletic background to help others improve their fitness and well-being. At the time, much of my knowledge was based on personal experience and pseudoscience picked up at the gym and online. To gain a more rigorous, science-based understanding of the physiological and molecular processes that regulate metabolism, skeletal muscle plasticity and exercise performance, I pursued a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Health Sciences and Technology at ETH Zurich. I then continued my academic journey with a PhD in Molecular Biology at the Biozentrum, University of Basel, where I worked on a variety of projects focused on unraveling the intricacies of training adaptation and understanding the functional dynamics of skeletal muscle throughout adulthood and aging. For my postdoc, I am excited to apply what I have learned about molecular physiology and exercise adaptation to further explore muscle plasticity and its potential to help us improve or maintain musculoskeletal function throughout life.