Connecting, engaging and nurturing EMBL’s global community of current and former scientists, technicians, communicators and administrators
American Joe Sanger, the first Humboldt Fellow to work at EMBL in 1979-80, remembers his first meeting with former EMBL Cell Biology and Biophysics group leader Brigitte Jockusch (1978-81), that resulted in a fantastic year at EMBL, and a lifetime of friendship and collaborations. Together with his…
EMBL alumni travel all over the world when they leave, but Martin Senger found himself a more unusual new home than most – King Abdullah University of Science and Technology in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Martin, how did you end up in Saudi Arabia? After leaving EMBL, where I was a scientist in Graham…
The first ever EMBL local chapter meeting in Ireland was hosted by the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) on 24 February and attracted alumni from academia, industry and government alike. Former EMBO Director Frank Gannon, EMBL Director General Iain Mattaj and EMBL group leaders Eileen Furlong and…
The first EMBL Irish chapter meeting on 24 February 2010 offered an ideal opportunity to catch up with its host, former EMBO Director, Frank Gannon about his work at SFI “The major challenge facing SFI – the main scientific funding agency in Ireland – is the collapse of the…
With Christmas just around the corner, we spoke to some EMBL alumni who help bring festive cheer to the dinner table… Wine making runs on a yearly rhythm, which starts in January with the cutting and tying of the vines for the new grapes. Cultivating the soil is a constant job from March to…
The 5th Iberian chapter meeting – the first to be held in Portugal – took place on 2 October at the Institute for Molecular and Cell Biology (IBMC) in Porto. Participants were largely EMBL Portuguese alumni as well as IBMC staff, who gathered to listen to talks on neurodegeneration,…
Paula Sampaio, who is often seen walking through the corridors of the IBMC with a screwdriver, was a visiting scientist in the EMBL Cell Biology and Biophysics Gonzalez Group from 1995 to 2001. While responsible for maintaining the first Leica confocal microscope at EMBL and teaching scientists how…
It’s thanks to EMBL’s IT group that we can maintain contact with alumni via online registrations and updates – an interface which was set up in 2003 by Björn Kindler. Since his departure it has been enhanced by Matthias Helmling to carry out advanced searches and to import the records of all…
One of the interesting career paths outlined at the ‘Where next after EMBL’ event was that of former EMBL predoc Pavel Tomancak, now a group leader at the MPI for Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) in Dresden. He has gained experience in three very different fields during his…
To stay in academia, you have to be convinced about the topic you are working on, and be sure that it’s going to motivate you for the next ten to fifteen years.” This was the message from former EMBL Monterotondo group leader Walter Witke at the ‘Where next after EMBL?’ event at EMBL…