Former EMBL predoc Silke Pichler does a juggling act with her roles as full-time cadre athlete in the Austrian national team, employee of the Austrian Triathlon Federation and Research Associate in the Department of Genetics at Cambridge University, UK.

Silke, who studied in the Cell Biology Unit at EMBL Heidelberg from 1997-2001, points out that “athletics at this level needs absolute commitment, a professional coach, sponsorship, good training partners, and the moral support of family and friends”. These components have all been there for Silke: from Tim Williams, her trainer at the Cambridge triathlon club, to her sponsors Mike’s Bike in Cambridge and Orca, a wetsuit company in New Zealand, to name a few. She is particularly grateful for the encouragement and understanding of her supervisor, Prof. David Glover, for making her double life as scientist and athlete possible. In turn, she feels that her scientific work has benefited from the endurance training and racing (ironman, for instance, constitutes over nine hours of 3.8k swimming, 112k cycling and 42k running) which have given her the mental stamina to compete in science at a very high level, to change her research field twice, and to keep publishing.

In 2006 she competed in both the Ironman Triathlon Worldchampionships in Hawaii in October and the Ironman 70.3 Triathlon Worldchampionships in Florida in November. The latter qualified her for a professional triathlon licence and since then she has completed her first pro race in Ironman Austria 2007 as 11th pro woman. She hopes to match this achievement scientifically by completing her article on nuclear tracking in the syncytial blastoderm of Drosophila in the coming months.

Silke will then return to Austria and is currently investigating of postdoctoral fellowships and grants for group leaders. This means that she can stay involved with the local chapter meetings there.