The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) announced the selection of 31 new Freeman Hrabowski Scholars.
This program, launched in 2022, supports outstanding early career faculty in science who have potential to become leaders in their research fields and to create diverse and inclusive lab environments in which everyone can thrive.
You are on fire Lena! Super congrats for this astonishing result!
https://www.hhmi.org/news/hhmi-names-31-inaugural-freeman-hrabowski-scholars
Time for another celebration in Pernas lab!
This time the protagonist is Chahat, who is awarded the 2023 Federico Tonielli award.
This award, established in memory of Federico Tonielli, who was a PhD student at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, Cologne University, enables scientific travel of a talented PhD or Master student.
The award ceremony will be held on May 26th 2023
Thanks to this grant, Chahat will attend the conference “Molecular Membrane Biology - Function of Proteins and Lipids at Organelle Membranes in Health and Disease” organized by Gordon Research Conference, where she will also have the pleasure to give a talk about the recent findings of her doctoral work.
Congratulation Chahat!
FEBS and GBM are pleased to announce that this year’s recipients of a FEBS Anniversary Prize are Ville Kaila (Stockholm University, Sweden) and Lena Pernas (Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing, Germany).
The FEBS Anniversary Prize of the Gesellschaft für Biochemie und Molekularbiologie (GBM) is awarded for outstanding achievements in the field of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology or related sciences by the upcoming generation of senior scientists.
Visit the FEBS 47th Congress to listen to Lena’s talk on “Organelle and metabolic dynamics of the host–pathogen interaction” during the Host–microbial interactions symposium on 11 July 2023!
Congrats Lena!
The ARTEMIS (African Research Talents Experiencing Mentoring In Science) program is aimed at interested mentees (students, graduates or doctoral candidates) at African universities and research institutes who are looking for advice on how to advance their studies or scientific career.
Exchange experiences, learn from others, make contacts, build a network, develop career prospects. This is what the Max Planck Society's mentorship program offers to mentors at MPIs and mentees at African universities and research institutions.
Thanks to this program, Bruna is given the opportunity to improve her leadership and communication skills, develop her intercultural competence and make an important contribution to the advancement of a junior scientists in Africa. All the best for this new exciting experience Bruna!
The EMBO Scientific Exchange Grants support new, international collaborations, enabling the transfer of expertise unavailable in the applicant’s laboratory.
Thanks to her past accomplishments and her promising project proposal, she was rewarded this exchange grant that will allow her to spend few weeks in Dr. Noam Zelcer laboratory at the Amsterdam University Medical Center.
This is a wonderful opportunity for her to improve her skills, expand her knowledge and create new connections, sharing her expertise to another research group in return.
Congrats Bruna!
https://www.embo.org/funding/fellowships-grants-and-career-support/scientific-exchange-grants/
Another piece has just been added to Tania’s medal collection!
She is the winner of a travel grant funded by the Collaborative Research Center (CRC) /Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB) 1218 on Mitochondrial regulation of cellular function, which will allow her to attend the meeting on Mechanisms of Metabolic Signaling & Disease in Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, NY, for which she was also selected as speaker.
The meeting will take place from May 16th to May 20th 2023 and will fill an important gap by bringing together outstanding researchers with a common goal of understanding the role and regulation of metabolic signals in a diverse array of pathways, cell types, and diseases.
https://meetings.cshl.edu/meetings.aspx?meet=METAB&year=23
On January 20th Xianhe Li defended successfully his thesis “SPOTS: A Novel Mitochondrial Response to Stress at the Outer Mitochondrial Membrane”.
Congratulations Li, well deserved!
Dr. Sophie Steculorum, Max-Planck-Institut für Stoffwechselforschung and Lena are the winner of the Volkswagenstiftung grant.
As a private research funding organization, Volkswagenstiftung supports researchers with creative ideas aimed at changing the world of science. Lena and Sofia, with their project on Community Immunity, definitely met the requirements, striving to discover novel strategies to fight epidemics by identifying compounds that activate anti-microbial responses in healthy individuals.
Congrats Lena and Sofia!
It is safe to say without Silvia the lab would have descended into total chaos a while ago…thank you for your infinite patience and kindness and all around wonderful-ness Silvia!!!
Silvia Reato as finalist for Proteintech's Best Lab Manager Award 2022
Congrats to Bruna for being selected for the Mentoring Program for International Female Scholars offered by the University of Cologne.
The IFS program, which this year celebrates its 10th anniversary (2012-2022), offers one-on-one mentoring between mentors and mentee and is embedded in a targeted framework program which combines network meetings, training and workshop. One of the indirect aims is also combatting the high attrition rate among women in academia.
More info here: https://verwaltung.uni-koeln.de/abteilung43/content/mentoring/ifs_mentoring/faq/index_ger.html
Another great achievement for Lena, who has been selected as one of the newest members of the EMBO Young Investigator Programme, joining the existing network of 135 current and 390 former members of the programme.
The EMBO Young Investigator Programme supports excellent group leaders who have been in independent positions for less than four years and have an excellent track record of scientific achievements.
Once again, congrats Lena!
More here https://www.embo.org/press-releases/embo-welcomes-24-young-investigators/
EMBO welcomes 24 Young Investigators
Confirming her astonishing progresses in the field, Lena was indicated as Cell Scientist to Watch from the Journal of Cell Science.
The great results she is accumulating have not passed unobserved!
Read her interview here ——> https://doi.org/10.1242/jcs.260704
We are curious to see what her next achievement is gonna be!
Thanks to her discoveries in the field of the metabolism of infection, Lena was awarded the BINDER Innovation Prize 2022.
Since 1998, this prize has been awarded annually by the German Society for Cell Biology (DGZ) together with BINDER, for outstanding work in the field of basic cell biology research.
Congrats Lena!
Tania has been selected for a talk in the MITOchat Seminar Series, Fall 2023 edition.
She will present her recent work on cell metabolism ”Host compartmentalize metabolism to defend against microbes”. Save the date: Thursday November 17th, from 17h00 (CET). We already know you will outstand, Tania!
Congratulation to Tania for being selected as speaker at the Cell Symposia: Multifaceted Mitochondria, taking place in Seville, Spain, from 6th to 8th November 2022.
In this occasion she will have the chance to present her exciting discoveries on mitochondrial metabolism: “Reprogramming of mitochondrial pyrimidine metabolism protect host cells during infection”.
Good luck Tania! We know you will rock it!
Last year for lab retreat, our group managed to enjoy few days in Monshau. It was just our group in an isolated house immersed in the nature.
This year we expanded our horizons, flying all the way down to Padua, Italy, for a joint lab retreat.
There we spend some days with groups that shared a common origin: all the PIs of those groups were, as Lena, former members of Prof. Luca Scorrano lab.
We thus had the opportunity to have a glimpse of what was the environment that formed our boss, to see how different the science can get between groups that originated from the same point.
All this in that idyllic setting which is Padua, surrounded by astonishing views, delicious food and fascinating people. See you soon Padua, thank you for having us!
Padua, 14-16 September 2022
Chahat has been selected to give a talk in the workshop “Membrane Organization & Contact Sites” organized by the DGZ (Deutsche Gesellschaft für Zellbiologie) taking place on Tuesday 30th August 2022.
In this occasion she presented her own work on cellular trafficking: “Finding a direction- how do organelles know where to go in a cell?”. Great job Chahat!
Congratulations to Lena on the great placement as finalist in the 2022 Eppendorf Award for Young European Investigators for her work on the relationship between mitochondrial health and microbial fitness.
This award acknowledges her outstanding contributions to biomedical research in Europe based on methods of molecular biology, including novel analytical concepts.
Keep on rocking!
https://corporate.eppendorf.com/en/company/scientific-awards/european-award/2022-award-finalist-lena-pernas/
Thanks to his great abstract, Li was selected as speaker for a short talk at FEBS/EMBO lecture course on 'Lipids, proteins and their interactions in organelle biology', a 6-day summer school that took place in Spetses, a small island of Greece, from May 29th to June 3rd 2022. Well done Li!
The biennial meeting on Toxoplasma Biology and Toxoplasmosis is the most important event for researchers in this field. Its XVI version was held in Riverside, California from May 22-26 2022. During this meeting representatives from almost all laboratories working on this parasite were present and thanks to his fascinating project “Cellular Senescence: A Hideout for Chronic Microbial Infections?”, Patrick was selected to give a turbo talk for the audience. Congrats Patrick!
