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April 2006
Winner of the 1000th person to register
Brice Kauffmann, a former postdoc at
EMBL Hamburg, was recently the winner
of a silkscreen painting as the 1,000th
person to register with the Alumni
Association, in which there are now 1,050
members. Now a Senior Scientist at the
CNRS Institut Européen de Chimie et
Biologie [IECB], Pessac, France, Brice was
delighted: "That's the first time I've won
something!"
Brice, what made you return home to
France?
I went back because the CNRS is the largest
fundamental research organisation in
Europe. IECB in Bordeaux hosts outstanding
European chemists and biologists working in
a multidisciplinary environment and is open
to partnerships with academic and industrial
research centres. They were looking for a
crystallographer; I got the job through competition,
which is how all civil servants
[including tenured scientists at CNRS] are
recruited in France.
What's challenging about this job?
I'm responsible for the X-ray diffraction and
small angle scattering facility. What's really
exciting is that I have two state-of-the-art
machines that allow me to study the 3D
structures of molecules of biological interest.
In terms of research, I work mainly on topics
from the local groups, as the facility is brand
new and needs to be optimised. I hope to
develop my own research with external collaborations
soon.
How did EMBL prepare you for this position?
As a postdoc at EMBL Hamburg [2004-06], I
worked on methodological protein crystallography
with synchrotron radiation. As a
member of Manfred Weiss team, I followed
and participated in the building of the new
beamline [X12]. This experience has been
invaluable in setting up the facility here. I was
also involved in providing support to the
users of the beamline, which was good training
as I now help people everyday in collecting
data on my machines.
Are you still in touch with EMBL colleagues?
I'm currently working with another EMBL
alumnus, Sebastien Fribourg, formerly of
Elena Conti's group, who is starting a structural
biology group in our institute. I don't
have an official collaboration yet but intend
to establish one. I'd like to keep an eye on
what's happening at EMBL, which is also why
I joined the Alumni Association.
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