New at the Max Delbrück Center

A political scientist and expert in research policy, Tim Flink plans to enhance collaboration, align research with industry needs, and strengthen our societal and political relevance.

Johannes Huppa has taken up the professorship for tumor immunology at Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin as of September 1. The T-cell receptor expert will also conduct research at the Max Delbrück Center in Berlin-Buch and the German Consortium for Translational Cancer Research (DKTK).

Organ-on-a-chip technologies can serve as models of human biology. But they have been limited by the inability to grow them with a vascular system. Bioengineer Professor Milica Radisic will begin a three-year fellowship at the Max Delbrück Center in Berlin-Buch to take on the challenge.

It borders on the miraculous how an entire animal emerges from a single egg cell. In order to understand the underlying molecular mechanisms, Markus Mittnenzweig is establishing the Computational and Developmental Biology Lab at the Max Delbrück Center.

Sarah Hedtrich heads a guest group at the Max Delbrück Center. The Johanna Quandt Professor at the Berlin Institute of Health at Charité (BIH) is working on organ-on-a-chip models to develop new treatment options for rare hereditary and inflammatory skin and lung diseases.

The Robson lab at the Max Delbrück Center will be studying how the 3D structure of chromatin controls genes during development and in disease. Leveraging novel single cell methods, they will look at muscular dystrophies and retinal disease. Both seem to be linked to mutations that disrupt the function of non-coding DNA.

She wants to uncover the mechanisms behind inflammatory neurodegenerative diseases, while also developing new therapeutic approaches and testing them in clinical trials. With these goals in mind, Frederike Cosima Oertel is launching the Translational Neuroimmunology Lab at the ECRC.

The Image Data Analysis Platform has a new leader in Deborah Schmidt. She and her team create software that processes and analyzes image data from biomedicine, material sciences, or environmental research – something that benefits the entire Helmholtz Association.

As a visiting lab leader, biologist Susanne Wolf will spend five years at the Max Delbrück Center researching how microglia change in psychiatric diseases – and how these cells help the diseases develop and progress. In doing so, Wolf hopes to identify new targets for medicines.

Yoichiro Sugimoto has headed the MDC lab “Molecular mechanisms of environment sensing” since July 2022. His team investigates how cells respond to changes in oxygen levels in their environment and what role disturbances to this system play in certain diseases.