Connecting, engaging and nurturing EMBL’s global community of current and former scientists, technicians, communicators and administrators
What comes to mind when you think of EMBL? As the Lab turns 40, and with the help of staff and alumni, here is an unofficial and by no means complete list of what it is about our institution that gets people excited, energised or enthralled.
New Dehli, Brno, Warsaw, Buenos Aires, Copenhagen, Cape Town… looking at Silke Schumacher’s agenda, you could be forgiven for thinking she is an air hostess, global celebrity, or diplomat.
Eleven years after leaving EMBL, Giovanni Frazzetto – joint-recipient of the first John Kendrew Award in 2008 – is now the academic coordinator of a new programme at the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study, known as Wiko (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin). “Wiko is a cultural paradise,”…
Trio celebrates two-decade collaboration In 1990 Peter Becker, Hans Schöler and Francis Stewart were simultaneously recruited to EMBL as group leaders by the recently appointed Gene Expression Program Director, Iain Mattaj. At that time chromatin was emerging as a new, puzzling, component in the…
Bartek Wilczynski, former Furlong Group postdoc and one of the 2011 EMBO Installation Grantees, tells Yvonne Kaul about his first year as Group Leader in Poland, at the Institute of Informatics in Warsaw University. How was the first year back in Poland?It was overwhelming. Senior colleagues had…
Two of EMBL’s most northerly alumni tell us about life and science in their wintry lands… Varpu Marjomaki, group leader at the University of Jyväskylä, Finland Science after EMBL?I am studying endocytic membrane traffic, looking at certain picornaviruses (such as echovirus 1) that are…
‘Publish or perish’ is the mantra for many young researchers, but it was publishing of a very different kind that helped earn Amaicha Depino the John Kendrew Young Scientist Award for 2011. Since completing her EMBL postdoc in the Gross Group at Monterotondo (2004–2006), Amaicha has, with…
In 1980 Sven Hovmöller was a postdoc in EMBL Heidelberg’s Structural and Computational Biology Unit. His lifelong interest in China meant he was thrilled to meet another postdoc, Yun Li, who joined the unit from the Shanghai Institute of Biochemistry. Thirty years later, Sven – now professor…
Exchange and networking are key tenets of science, as cell biologist and imaging specialist Caroline Medioni discovered when she spent six months at EMBL Heidelberg in Anne Ephrussi’s group honing a system to image axon growth within intact fly brains. Caroline’s team leader, Florence Besse, of…
Fifteen EMBL alumni working in Greece gathered for their fourth annual meeting in the picturesque villages of Aspraggeloi and Dilofo on 26-27 June 2010. Along with 13 family members and ten postdocs from their research groups, the alumni enjoyed a sunny weekend discussing life and science in…