Women in Science

Two women, one mission: Kathrin Saar, our newly elected Equal Opportunities Officer at the Max Delbrück Center, and her deputy Aileen Cunningham want to make women in science more visible and promote equality within our institution.

The Zia fellowship supports young female researchers in their professional and personal development. Interested applicants can apply for next year’s fellowship in July and August. Evangelia Nathanail from the Max Delbrück Center is a current fellow — and highly recommends the program.

How does research actually work? What do data scientists and animal caretakers do? This year, 17 girls visited the Max Delbrück Center for Girls' Day – and five boys took part in Boys' Day.

The German Research Foundation (DFG) has announced that biochemist Ana Pombo from the Max Delbrück Center is among this year’s winners of the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize. With a grant of €2.5 million, the Leibniz Prize is one of the highest endowed research prizes in Germany.

For the next two years, Abeer Hassan will be a visiting postdoctoral fellow in Gary Lewin’s lab at Max Delbrück Center – going back and forth between Rehovot and Berlin. She seeks to learn more about the mechanisms through which mechanical forces stimulate neurons to elongate, especially after birth.

Nella Christie Delva joins the lab of Annette Hammes-Lewin’s as a Fulbright scholar. Over the next few months, she will study how environmental stressors cause genetic and neural changes in the brain during development, which can lead to mental health disorders.

Ashley Sanders, Group Leader of the Genome Instability and Somatic Mosaicism Lab, developed a technique to sequence strands of DNA in single cells. Today it is the most accurate method to detect DNA rearrangements. She hopes the technique will help reveal clues on how diseases develop.

The German Stem Cell Network (GSCN) recognizes Mina Gouti as an outstanding stem cell researchers on her way to expanding basic research and opening up new avenues for therapeutic options. She receives the GSCN 2024 Hilde Mangold Award for her pioneering work on human neuromuscular organoids.

Without great scientists, there is no great research. For this reason, the Max Delbrück Center supports young researchers and science managers through various mentoring programs – both internally and externally. In this installment of “We at MDC,” mentees and mentors talk about their experiences.

Life sciences research generates enourmous amounts of data; their analysis is thus no longer possible without machine learning or artificial intelligence. On Girls' Day, students from grades 6 to 12 found out what female mathematicians and computer scientists do at the Max Delbrück Center.