Fink Group

Professor Alke Petri-Fink received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Ulm, Germany in 1999. After a post-doctoral stay at the University of Gainesville, Florida, she joined the Institute of Materials Science at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), first as a post-doctoral researcher, then as a senior scientist. She started as a Swiss National Science Foundation Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Fribourg in 2009 and received tenure from the same department in 2015. Currently, she holds 2 appointments, one in the Chemistry Department (40%) and another at the Adolphe Merkle Institute (50%), Switzerland.

• Research Interest

  Our research group's, BIONANOMATERIALS, interests are situated at the interface of chemistry, biology, and physics. We address fundamental and applied questions, which are also highly relevant to important societal issues such as environment or human health.
  Our overarching goal lies in understanding and controlling all aspects from nanoparticle synthesis and ligand chemistry, colloidal behavior in complex biological fluids, and nanoparticle-cell interaction to nanoparticle and cellular fate. We strongly rely on advanced analytical techniques, microscopy (light, electron, atomic force), and scattering methods (light and X-ray) in addition to typical chemical and biological analytical methods.

   

• Selected Publications
  1. Kinnear, C; Moore, T. L; Rodriguez-Lorenzo, L.; Rothen-Rutishauser, B.; Petri-Fink, A. Form Follows Function: Nanoparticle Shape and Its Implications for Nanomedicine  Chem. Rev., 2017, 117, 11476.
     
     
  2. Monnier, A.; Lattuada, M.; Burnand, D.; Crippa, F.; Martinez-Garcia, J. C.; Hirt, A. M.; Rothen-Rutishauser, B.; Bonmarin, M.; Petri-Fink, A. A lock-in-based method to examine the thermal signatures of magnetic nanoparticles in the liquid, solid and aggregated states  Nanoscale, 2016, 8, 13321.
     
     
  3. Moore, T. L.; Rodriguez-Lorenzo, L.; Hirsch, V.; Balog, S.; Urban, D.; Jud, C.; Rothen-Rutishauser, B.; Lattuada, M.; Petri-Fink, A. Nanoparticle colloidal stability in cell culture media and impact on cellular interactions Chem. Soc. Rev., 2015, 44, 6287.
     
     
  4. Balog, S.; Rodriguez-Lorenzo, L.; Monnier, C. A.; Obiols-Rabasa, M.; Rothen-Rutishauser, B.; Schurtenberger,P.; Petri-Fink, A. Characterizing nanoparticles in complex biological media and physiological fluids with depolarized dynamic light scattering  Nanoscale, 2015, 7, 5991.
     
     
  5. Bonnaud, C.; Monnier, C. A.; Demurtas, D.; Jud, C.; Vanhecke, D.; Montet, X.; Hovius, R.; Lattuada, M.; Rothen-Rutishauser, B.; Petri-Fink, A. Insertion of Nanoparticle Clusters into Vesicle Bilayers ACS Nano, 2014, 8, 3451.