News
Congrats Philipp Melchinger for a fantastic talk at the Keystone Organelle Membrane Contact sites in Health and Disease 2024!!!
Philipp Melchinger is selected for a short talk at the Keystone "Organelle Membrane Contact Sites in Health and Disease", congratulations on a great talk Philipp!
'Welcome Marta, Sam, Nathan, and Connor!'
Sebastian's review on "Metabolic immunity against microbes" is out!
The Gulbenkian Institute PhD programs and 30 years of nurturing talent
Wilson shares some of his journey and research interests! Listen here :)
It's out!
Congratulations Dr. Garcia!!!
Bruna’s work earned her a well deserved summa cum laude thesis — which her family who came all the way from Brazil were able to watch. Congratulations Dr. Garcia!!! We let her father take over the cart-pulling tradition :)
Where the heck did all those structures inside complex cells come from?
“Scientists agree that eons ago, a bacterium took up residence inside another cell and became its powerhouse, the mitochondrion. But there are competing theories about the birth of other organelles such as the nucleus and endoplasmic reticulum.”
Thank you Viviane for the interesting article and featuring our work in Knoweable Magazine!
Credit: ISTOCK.COM / ARTUR PLAWGO
Chahat will co-chair the 2025 Gordon Reseach Seminar on Molecular Membrane Biology!
Better late than never: Chahat was selected to co-chair the 2025 Gordon Research Seminar on Molecular Membrane Biology. Thank you Haoxi Wu and Pilar Rivero-Rios for putting together such a thoughtful program and congratulations Chahat!
Li presents at the EMBO Workshop on Lipid Droplets
Explaining his latest discoveries that involve a potential role of lipid droplets in the fate of the his favorite cellular structure, the SPOTs, Li presented his work at the last EMBO workshop “Lipid droplets: Metabolic hubs in health and disease” in Costa Brava, Girona, Spain on September 19th.
Huge success for him and an amazing opportunity to gather opinions from authorities in the field.
Well done Li!
Bruna got accepted in to the FASEB LEAD program
Based on her career track and her professional development goals, Bruna was accepted into the FASEB Leadership Engagement and Appreciation of Differences (LEAD) reverse mentoring program, which pairs senior-level professionals with junior-level mentors to gain different perspectives of individual, group, and cultural views within the workplace and the scientific research communities.
This is a wonderful opportunity for her to get in touch with people more experienced people, not limited to the academic environment, and have an open discussion on diversity in the research community.
HHMI Names Lena as one of the 31 Inaugural Freeman Hrabowski Scholars
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
Chahat is awarded the 2023 Federico Tonielli Award that will bring her to Molecular Membrane Biology Gordon Research Conference
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!
She did it again! Lena wins the FEBS Anniversary Prize 2023
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!
Mentor once again: Bruna is now part of the ARTEMIS program
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!
Bruna wins The EMBO Scientific Exchange Grant
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/
Tania will fly to NY thanks to a CRC 1218 travel grant
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
Li is now a Doctor of Philosophy!
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!
Lena wins the Volkswagenstiftung grant on Community Immunity
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!
Silvia is a finalist for Proteintech's Best Lab Manager Award 2022!!!
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