Professor Sonja Kleinlogel is a trained biochemist, with a long-standing track-record in optogenetics, gene therapy and neurophysiology. Sonja led the research group “Translational Optogenetics” at the University of Bern pioneering the fields of optogenetics and vision restoration by engineering light-sensitive designer proteins and retinal gene therapies. She co-founded Arctos Medical AG, sold to Novartis last year. Sonja is passionate about developing innovative technologies and bringing basic research to patients in need.
Sonja Kleinlogel received her MSc degree at the University of Bern working on therapies for the restoration of hearing and completed her PhD studies at the Vision Touch and Hearing Research Centre of the University of Queensland (Australia) working on color and polarization vision. After a Postdoc at the Max-Planck Institute for Biophysics in Frankfurt (Germany), one of the optogenetics founder labs, she was appointed at the University of Bern in 2012 and received tenure in 2018.
Sonja Kleinlogel is committee member of the European “next-generation optogenetics” program and received several innovation prizes, such as the Theodor Kocher Prize, the Euretina Prize and the SwissOphth Award. She is married, mother of two children and lives with her family in the Bern area.