Members' Directory

Biography: BSc. degree: 1975- 1978, 1st Class Honors, Reading University, UK

PhD. Thesis: 1978-1981 , "The interferon system in the developing mouse embryo" Warwick University, UK. Supervisor: Prof. DC Burke

Post-Doctoral Fellowship (1) 1981-1985 with Dr. Brigid Hogan, at the I.C.R.F. Mill Hill Laboratories, London, U.K. Project - Isolation of basement membrane genes

Post-Doctoral Fellowship (2) 1985-1988 with Dr. Hans Lehrach, at the E.M.B.L. Heidelberg, Germany. Project - Molecular strategies to isolate developmental genes from the mouse t complex region.

Group Leader (1) 1988-1995 Institute of Molecular Pathology (I.M.P), Vienna.
Research area: Mammalian Developmental Genetics, focus on genomic imprinting. (5 + 3 year position). Elected EMBO member in 1995

Group leader (2) 1996 ? 2001 (May) The Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, Research area: links between mammalian development and tumor genetics (Permanent position)

Head, Department of Developmental Genetics, Austrian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Molecular Biology, Salzburg, Austria. From 1st June 2000 (Permanent position)

General scientific interest:
1. Mammalian development in mice and the involvement of developmental genes in human disease. The last 10 years, focus on genomic imprinting function and mechanism. We earlier identified the mouse Igf2r gene as an imprinted gene also demonstrated that this gene uses a methylation imprint to express the maternal allele. Many imprinted genes now appear to carry methylation imprints that act to express the active allele. Silencing of the paternal Igf2r allele was recently shown to involve a regulatory non-coding RNA named Air . Future work will investigate the mechanism of silencing by non-coding RNAs and their general application to silencing imprinted genes. July 25, 2002.
2. Member and current chair of the EMBO Science and Society Committee

Biography: Diplom Biochemistry FU Berlin 1977-1983 after Diplomarbeit at Weizmann Inst. of Science in Israel with Yossi Schlessinger and Hermona Soreq. PhD at EMBL/Heidelberg Univ. 1983-1987 with Hans Lehrach on physical mapping of the Duchenne Muscular Dystrophy gene, as well as several technique developments. 1987-1991 postdoctoral fellow at Univ. of California San Francisco with Rick Myers and David Cox, where I was involved in physical mapping of chromosome 21, including development of radiation hybrid mapping, as well as mutation detection methods. Since 1991 faculty (first Assistant Prof., since 1997 Assoc. Prof.) at the University of Michigan in the Mental Health Research Institute, Dept. of Psychiatry, the Dept. of Human Genetics, as well as the Neuroscience Program. We are interested in the genetic basis of behavior and of neuropsychiatric disorders, studying both humans and mouse models (see webpage for more details).

Biography: My main interests are the mechanisms of cytoadherence in Plasmodium falciparum and the analysis of the binding sites on the variant surface antigen (PfEMP-1) and host molecules for cytoadherence. These questions are being addressed using a range of approaches including;
1) Expression of regions from var genes in heterologous systems for functional analysis
2) Analysis of natural polymorphisms in ICAM-1 on adhesive interactions
3) Detailed mapping of the binding site on ICAM-1 for infected erythrocytes
4) Flow-based adhesion studies on purified proteins and cultured endothelium as an ex-vivo model of cytoadherence
5) Inhibition of adhesion as a therapeutic intervention
6) Use of genome sequence information and functional genomics to address problems in cytoadherence

Biography: 1987 Ph.D. at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory, Heidelberg
1987-1988 Postdoctoral research at the National Institute for Medical Research, London, as fellow of the European Molecular Biology Organisation” (EMBO)
1989- 1993 Research Group leader at the Max-Planck-Institute for Developmental Biology, Tübingen
1994-2003 Senior Staff Scientist, and Research Group leader at the Max-Planck-Institute of Immunobiology, Freiburg
2002 EMBO Member
since 2003 Professor and Director of the Institute of Medical Genetics at the Charité, and Director of the Department of Developmental Genetics at the Max-Planck-Institute for molecular Genetics, Berlin

Biography: 1975 - 1982 Studies of Pharmacy at the Universities
of Graz and Innsbruck, Austria
Degree: Master of Pharmacy

1979 - 1982 Studies of Genetics and Biology
at the University of Salzburg, Austria

1982 - 1987 Work on Ph.D. thesis at the
European Molecular Biology Laboratory,
Heidelberg, Germany
Degree: Dr. rer. nat.

1987 - 1989 Research Fellow, Imperial Cancer Research Fund, London
in the laboratory of Dr. Hans Lehrach

1989 - 1994 Associate Scientist, Imperial Cancer Research Fund, London
Head of Reference Library DataBase (RLDB)

1995 - present Groupleader, Max-Planck-Institut for Molecular Genetics,
Vertebrate Genomics Department, Berlin-Dahlem

July 1995 - June 2000 On sabbatical as Scientific Director of the
Resource Center (Berlin) / Primary Database (RZPD)
of the German Human Genome Project at the
Max-Planck-Institute for Molecular Genetic (Berlin) and
the Deutsches Krebsforschungszentrum (Heidelberg),
Berlin-Charlottenburg, until the RZPD became a nonprofit
company.