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| Heidelberg,
Sunday 1 May 2005 |
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| EMBL's fourth Director-General, Dr Iain Mattaj, takes office |
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Press
Release 1 May 2005 [PDF]
[Deutsch]
[Français]
[Italiano]
Dr. Iain Mattaj today took over the leadership of
the European Molecular Biology Laboratory [EMBL],
a prominent basic research and training institute
with laboratories in France, Germany, Italy and
the UK.
"The pace of progress in the life sciences
is remarkable. I see my job as ensuring that EMBL
matches this pace to stay at the forefront of molecular
biology research," says Dr. Mattaj.
Mattaj has a
unique advantage over his predecessors – he knows
the laboratory very well. He has been at EMBL for
over 20 years and has been highly involved in scientific
planning at the lab since becoming Scientific Director
in 1999.
What will be the most significant challenges
for the new Director-General?
"One of my first challenges
is to update EMBL's facilities and modernize the
infrastructure of the lab. Turning our ambitious
scientific plans into reality will depend on addressing
this challenge now," he says.
Mattaj's plans include
not only maintaining a leadership position in molecular
biology research, but also strengthening EMBL in
all areas of its missions, such as providing services,
developing new instrumentation, commercializing
new technologies, and training scientists at all
levels.
And he already has a head start on addressing
these goals – last month the countries that fund
EMBL voted to give the laboratory the resources
needed to begin renovating the 30-year old facilities
at the lab headquarters in Heidelberg. In addition,
Germany, who hosts EMBL's main laboratory, has agreed
to fund a new advanced training centre. This new
facility will off e r training for scientists and
non-scientists [such as teachers] through courses,
conferences, visits and sabbaticals.
"I'm very pleased
that the member states have approved this extra
funding," says Mattaj. "It's a vote of confidence
in me as well as in the directions established by
my predecessor, Prof. Kafatos. It also allows me
to focus on what I need to do – developing a new
scientific strategy for the lab."
As for changes
in EMBL's scientific scheme, Mattaj says that the
future of molecular biology lies with systems biology,
which aims to understand how complete biological
systems function, rather than focusing on the isolated
pieces. He also knows that EMBL will need the capacity
to deal with the enormous amount of data being generated
by high throughput experiments in modern research.
To do this, Mattaj will set up organizational structures
to encourage biologists to work not only with other
biologists, but also with physicists, chemists and
mathematicians, in order to build a solid base for
systems biology work at EMBL. The lab will also
advance its capacities and services in bioinformatics
to serve the wider scientific community and to give
all EMBL scientists expertise in using computational
methods.
Dr. Mattaj will be the fourth Director
General in the 31 years since EMBL was founded in
1974. His distinguished predecessors were Sir John
Kendrew, Prof. Lennart Philipson, and Prof. Fotis
C. Kafatos.
Press Contact
Trista Dawson
EMBL Press Officer, European Molecular Biology Laboratory,
Meyerhofstrasse 1, 69117 Heidelberg, Germany
Tel: +49 [0] 6221 3878452
E-mail: trista.dawson@embl.de |
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