Cell scientist to watch – Jakub Sedzinski

Abstract

Jakub Sedzinski is an Associate Professor at the University of Copenhagen and the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Stem Cell Medicine (reNEW), Denmark. After his undergraduate and Master's degrees in biotechnology at the University of Wroclaw, Poland, he completed his PhD in Prof. Ewa Paluch's lab at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics in Dresden, Germany, where he studied biophysical aspects of fundamental cell behaviours. Next, he moved to the University of Texas at Austin in the USA for a postdoctoral fellowship with Prof. John Wallingford. There, he became interested in how cell-level mechanics influence the complex development and maintenance of tissues like the mucociliary epithelium. In 2017, he started his own lab in Copenhagen where he continues to integrate biophysics with cell biology and developmental models in order to elucidate the relationships between cell and tissue mechanics and cell fate acquisition in epithelial tissue dynamics. We spoke with Jakub over Zoom about his career and how his cross-disciplinary approach to research is driven by his fundamental passion for learning new things.