MDC - Key Persons
Ana Pombo wants to understand the rules that govern our genome. This quest has led her to discover how important our genetic architecture is for the functioning of life. In the long term, she hopes her research will help understand diseases with complex origin such as autism and epilepsy.
Job Titles:
- Science Editor and Publications
Daria Bunina has been the head of a new lab at the MDC since July 2022. Her team is researching how epigenetic factors affect cell differentiation. When errors in this process occur, cardiovascular diseases and neurodevelopmental disorders can result.
Researcher Gaetano Gargiulo will build his new research group at the MDC. With the help of Helmholtz funding, he wants to find new ways of combating deadly brain tumors.
Job Titles:
- 88: Ultra High Field Facility ( MRT ) Room: 2.12
Job Titles:
- 88: Ultra High Field Facility ( MRT ) Room: 2.03
Immunologist Kathrin de la Rosa investigates how the body's own B cells protect us from infectious diseases. In the laboratory, she hopes to modify these cells in such a way that they produce powerful antibodies against pathogens which have overwhelmed our immune system until now.
Job Titles:
- Team Leader / BSIO Awardee
Job Titles:
- 88: Ultra High Field Facility ( MRT ) Room: 2.12
Job Titles:
- 88: Ultra High Field Facility ( MRT ) Room: 2.02
Hanna Zimmermann has spent years studying how the retina can be used to diagnose neurodegenerative diseases. She is now starting her own research group, the Applied Research on the Visual System Lab, at the ECRC - and has also been named a junior professor at Charité. She will receive an endowed professorship from the Einstein Center Digital Future for this purpose.
Jana Wolf draws on experimental data and the growing knowledge of cellular mechanisms to translate disease processes into mathematical models. Her models aim to represent the complexity of life as realistically as possible and to help develop therapies that are precisely tailored to the patient.
In early April, Katja Simon became the head of the "Autophagy in the Immune System" laboratory at the MDC. She and her team are planning to research how long-lived immune cells use the process of self-digestion to continually renew themselves. Patients may soon benefit from their findings.
Cancer immunologist Lydia Dyck has started her Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship at the MDC. Her goal is to find new ways for the immune system to recognize and eliminate cancer cells, as tumors often evade the body's defense mechanisms.
MDC PhD student Matthias Jürgen Schmitt is being honored with the Curt Meyer Memorial Prize of the Berlin Cancer Society for his achievements in cancer research. He employs molecular reporters to investigate how glioblastoma - the deadliest brain tumor of all - becomes resistant to therapies.
With the appointment of BIH Professor Michael Potente, the Berlin Institute of Health (BIH), Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin and the Max Delbrück Center (MDC) are strengthening their joint focus area "Translational Vascular Biomedicine." Potente, a trained cardiologist, is particularly interested in the innermost cell layer that lines our blood vessels, the endothelium. Integrative Vascular Biology
On 1 July 2018, cancer researcher Michela Di Virgilio of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) was awarded the Junior Professorship of DNA Damage Response and Preservation of Genome Integrity at Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin.
Job Titles:
- 88: Ultra High Field Facility ( MRT ) Room: 0.08
Job Titles:
- 88: Ultra High Field Facility ( MRT ) Room: 0.01
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Job Titles:
- Group Leader
- Principal Investigator
Job Titles:
- Chairman of the Board of Directors
- Scientific Director
- Lead the Max Delbrück Center
Maike Sander has been selected to direct the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC). The Supervisory Board appointed the diabetes researcher and professor of pediatrics and cellular and molecular medicine as the Scientific Director and Chair of the Board on June 16, 2022.
The Helmholtz Association wants to support excellent female scientists reach top positions. It is now giving MDC researcher Michela Di Virgilio a million euro grant to mark her appointment to a tenured professorship at Charité.
The physicist Professor Thoralf Niendorf has been appointed to the chair of Experimental Ultra High Field Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) at the Experimental and Clinical Research Center (ECRC) of the Max Delbrück Center for Molecular Medicine (MDC) Berlin-Buch and Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany. Since August 10, 2009 the specialist for imaging techniques from RWTH Aachen University heads the MRI facility of the ECRC on Campus Berlin-Buch. The research facility with one of the world's strongest magnetic resonance tomographs, a 7 Tesla whole-body MRI scanner, was dedicated in January 2009 by Professor Annette Schavan, Germany's Federal Minister of Education and Research.
Simone Spuler is looking to use stem cells and CRISPR to prevent the muscle tissue of patients with genetic muscle disorders from further deteriorating - or even to repair it. This could lead to the first therapeutic approaches for diseases that have up to now been considered incurable.
Viola Ehrig is the green-fingered gardener who works hard to ensure it's not only science and innovation that flourish at the Berlin-Buch campus, but trees and flowers as well. She and her colleague Steve Kossack provide stimulating surroundings for everyone at the science campus, including employees of the MDC.
Walter Birchmeier is celebrating his 75th Birthday - a time to celebrate his immense contributions to the MDC and to science.
Yoichiro Sugimoto has headed the MDC lab "Molecular mechanisms of environment sensing" since July 2022. His team investigates how cells respond to changes in oxygen levels in their environment and what role disturbances to this system play in certain diseases.