Arion Förtsch

Computational biologist · Bar-Nur Lab, ETH Zürich & Functional Genomics Center Zurich

I'm a computational biologist jointly appointed between the Bar-Nur Lab at ETH Zürich and the Functional Genomics Center Zurich (FGCZ), the joint genomics facility of ETH Zürich and the University of Zurich. At the FGCZ I help research groups across both institutions turn raw sequencing data into biology, with a focus on the analysis of single-cell and spatial transcriptomics.

Before moving to Switzerland I did my PhD in epigenetics at the Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics in Freiburg, dissecting how chromatin regulators shape gene-expression programs during differentiation across mouse models and human brain organoids.

Research

Together with the Bar-Nur Lab, I work on pre-clinical models of Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD), part of a research program leveraging multiple therapeutic modalities to treat degenerative muscle disease.

My contribution is the computational side: single-cell and single-nuclei profiling of these disease models and of drug-intervention studies, resolving how cell states and candidate therapies reshape muscle at scale.

Open-source work

bulk_rna_explorer

An interactive R Shiny app for exploring RNA-seq results — volcano plots, PCA, and gene-level views — so wet-lab collaborators can interrogate their own differential-expression results without writing code.

RShinyRNA-seq

mismap-qc

A Python package (on PyPI and conda-forge) for visualizing missing-data patterns in sequencing and proteomics datasets — a quick QC lens on what is and isn't measured across samples before analysis begins.

PythonQCproteomics

nd2_export

A small utility with a GUI for converting large Nikon ND2 microscopy files to the open OME-TIFF format, making imaging data portable across analysis pipelines and viewers.

PythonmicroscopyOME-TIFF

Selected publications

Full list on ORCID.

CV

2026 —
Computational Biologist / Bioinformatician
Bar-Nur Lab (Regenerative & Muscle Biology), ETH Zürich (D-HEST) & Functional Genomics Center Zurich · Zurich, CH
2020 – 2025
PhD, Chromatin Regulation
Max Planck Institute of Immunobiology and Epigenetics · Freiburg, DE
2019
Research Internship, Biochemistry
Stanford University School of Medicine · Stanford, CA, US
2017 – 2020
M.Sc. Molecular Biosciences
Heidelberg University · Heidelberg, DE
2014 – 2017
B.Sc. Biology
University of Bonn · Bonn, DE