EMBL Director General Professor Iain Mattaj shares how his institution’s unique model of giving the most talented young researchers scientific freedom has led to ground-breaking discoveries.

Students awarded EMBL Australia travel grants say their international trips led to postdoctoral job offers and enhanced their research, networks and collaboration opportunities.

The Australian National University has joined our Partner Laboratory Network as our first host institute in the ACT. 

Chief Scientist Dr Alan Finkel, EMBL Director General Prof Iain Mattaj and EMBL Australia Scientific Head Prof James Whisstock were some of the esteemed speakers to present at the node launch event on
14 June.

Research led by EMBL Australia Group Leader David Lynn has shown that, in preclinical animal models, antibiotic exposure in infants impairs their immune responses to five important, routine vaccinations that are administered worldwide - including vaccines against meningitis, pneumonia, tuberculosis and whooping cough. The research was published Cell Host & Microbe.

Dr Harald Janovjak has been awarded a JDRF project grant for his innovative work using light as a new strategy to treat type 1 diabetes. The EMBL Australia Group Leader’s work is the first application of visible light treatment to the insulin-making beta cells that are destroyed in type 1 diabetics.

An international collaboration jointly led by EMBL Australia Group Leader Dr Maté Biro (hosted at the University of New South Wales Node in Single Molecule Science) and EMBL Australia's first alumnus, Dr Nicolas Plachta of A*STAR in Singapore, has resulted in the discovery of a process during mammalian embryonic development that is critical for early embryos to develop into healthy blastocysts. The research was published in the journal Cell in March 2018.

An NHMRC Project Grant will assist Group Leader Mikaël Martino in engineering the second generation of growth factors, while postdoc Dr Qi Zhang wins an ARC DECRA fellowship.

EMBL Australia Node Head Scientia Professor Katharina Gaus has received the Khwarizmi International Award for her achievements in single-molecule imaging at an award ceremony in Tehran.

Prof Gaus – who leads the Single Molecule Science Node at the University of New South Wales – was one of five foreign laureates named by the Iranian Research Organization for Science and Technology at a ceremony attended by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani last week.

More than 200 delegates gathered to learn about the cutting edge of bioinformatics and computational biology research from a variety of top international and local speakers at the Australian Bioinformatics & Computational Biology Society (ABACBS) national conference and the Combine Student Symposium, held at SAHMRI in Adelaide in late 2017 and chaired by EMBL Australia Group Leader, David Lynn.

Associate Professor Edwina McGlinn and Dr Maté Biro have each been awarded grants for their respective projects investigating genome structure and regulation and biological mathematics.

The Australian Research Council (ARC) Discovery Project grants will provide three years of funding, commencing in 2018.