Team

Hilgers Lab

Group Leader Valérie Hilgers

Valérie Hilgers, born in 1982, studied Biology at the Saarland University in Saarbrücken, Germany, and at the Ecole Normale Supérieure, Paris, France. She earned her PhD at EMBL Heidelberg, Germany and at the Temasek Life Sciences Institute, Singapore.

From 2010 to 2016, Valérie Hilgers was a postdoctoral fellow at University of California, Berkeley, USA, in the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology. Since 2016, Valérie Hilgers has been Group Leader of a Max Planck Research Group at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg, Germany.

With her Lab in Freiburg, she studies the genetics and epigenetics of the nervous system. The team investigates neuron-specific RNA signatures and their role in neuronal development and function by using technologies range from functional Drosophila genetics, behavior studies, and imaging to RNA biochemistry and transcriptomics approaches.

In January 2026, Valérie Hilgers relocated her “RNA Biology and Neurogenetics“ research group to the Department of Biomedicine at the University of Basel, Switzerland.

Alumnae & Alumni