Biomedical Center Munich
print

Language Selection

Breadcrumb Navigation


Content

Junior research group leaders at the BMC and their path to success

Starting your own research group after the postdoc is one of the most crucial stages in an academic career, setting the course for the future. Within its first five years since inauguration, the Biomedical Center has provided a number of young investigators the opportunity to do just this. In many cases, junior researchers choose to join the BMC with their own research grant, for example from the DFG Emmy Noether Program, or one of the prestigious ERC Starting Grants from the European Union. As grant holders, they are given the status of BMC members, which offers them the opportunity to develop and realize their own research ideas embedded in the Center’s research infrastructure. Alternatively, junior scientists may receive assistant professorships in one of the research departments of the Biomedical Center, and use this opportunity to build their own research groups and expand their teaching credentials.

The success of these strategies has already become evident, as a number of these junior research group leaders have taken the next career steps after successful years at the BMC, and are now professors at other faculties or universities (see the detailed list at the end of the article).

Susanne Koch can tell one of these BMC success stories. After studying biology in Tübingen and receiving her PhD at the LMU Munich, she did her postdoctoral research at Columbia University in New York. In 2018, she received a grant from the renowned DFG Emmy Noether program and elected to start her research group at the BMC in the Department of Physiological Genomics. As major drivers for her decision to join the BMC, Susanne Koch names the interactive structure, the close interplay between basic and clinical research as well as the outstanding research infrastructure of the Center and the Großhadern/Martinsried campus. Especially the Core Facilities Bioimaging and Bioinformatics and the state-of-the-art animal facility were decisive aspects for her.

Susanne Koch’s research focuses on degenerative diseases of the retina and strategies to cure them. She describes her research aims as follows: “I want to understand how the cells in the retina communicate, how neuronal circuits reorganize during degeneration and therapy and how metabolism influences the loss of photoreceptor cells.” At the BMC, she not only had the chance to collaborate with colleagues sharing her scientific interests, but was also able to learn about and integrate new methods and techniques in her research.

Susanne Koch used her Emmy-Noether grant and her time at the BMC as springboard to professorship. Since October 2020, she holds a W2-professorship for Molecular Pharmacology at the Department of Pharmacy at the LMU. Looking back, she says: “What I especially appreciate about the BMC is that you can easily get in contact with other scientists. Due to various seminar series and events (like the BMC Science Seasons and the summer BBQ) I quickly gained important insights into the research of different groups at the BMC, had the chance to get in touch with people and was inspired to try and use new methods.” The network she formed at the BMC with scientists from various disciplines will further accompany her on her academic career path.


See additional success stories from BMC junior research group leaders who moved to universities all over Germany and Switzerland:

Dirk Baumjohann - Professorship for Autoimmunity, University Hospital Bonn

Leda Dimou – Professorship for Molecular and Translational Neuroscience, Ulm University

Regina Fluhrer – Head of chair Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Augsburg

Sandra Hake – Professorship for Genetics, Giessen University

Marisa Karow - Professorship for Biochemistry and Molecular Neuroscience, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg

Dejana Mokranjac – PI in the Faculty of Biology, LMU Munich

Felix Müller-Planitz – Professorship at the Institute for Physiological Chemistry, TU Dresden

Jovica Ninkovic – Professorship in the Department Cell Biology/Anatomy III at the Biomedical Center, LMU Munich

Christoph Scheiermann – Associate Professor, Department of Pathology and Immunology, Universität Genf

Volker Scheuss – PI in the Department of Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University Hospital, LMU Munich

Barbara Schraml – Tenure Track Professor, Institute of Cardiovascular Physiology and Pathophysiology, Biomedical Center, LMU München