IST Special Colloquium: The EMBL model: promoting excellence, interdisciplinarity and
Date
Friday, June 24, 2016 09:45 - 11:15
Speaker
Iain Mattaj (EMBL)
Location
Raiffeisen Lecture Hall, Central Building
Series
Colloquium
Tags
Institute Colloquium
Contact
The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) is Europes flagship laboratory for the life sciences. It was established over 40 years ago to create a centre of excellence for molecular biology research in Europe. Continued scientific excellence at EMBL is pursued through a unique mix of synergistic missions and a collaborative approach that combines methods and insights from different disciplines, complemented by a variety of successful organisational principles. As Europes only intergovernmental laboratory organisation in the life sciences, EMBL is ideally positioned to promote interdisciplinary collaboration and foster scientific excellence across Europe and beyond. In my talk I will present the successful EMBL model and illustrate EMBLs approach to promoting interdisciplinary excellence-driven European research in the life sciences. Prof. Iain Mattaj was born in St. Andrews, Scotland. He attended Edinburgh University. After completing his undergraduate degree in Biochemistry (honours) he attended the University of Leeds, England for his PhD studies. Following his PhD, Prof. Mattaj carried out postdoctoral research at the Friedrich Miescher Institute, Switzerland then at the Biocentre, University of Basel, Switzerland before joining EMBL Heidelberg, Germany as a Group Leader in 1985. He became Coordinator of the Gene Expression Unit at EMBL in 1990 before being promoted to the position of Scientific Director in 1999. Prof. Mattaj was appointed Director General in May 2005.