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Board of Directors
Dr. Maria Leptin, PhD
Director
"As a geneticist and developmental biologist I find great promise in the emerging recognition that the metabolic control of cell health contributes decisively to the ability of an organism to tolerate major systemic insults from congenital and infectious disease to stress and ageing. As a committed believer in curiosity-driven research I welcome a broad approach to trying to understand the fundamental cellular principles involved in returning the stressed organism to a healthy equilibrium state."
Dr. Maria Leptin is the President of the ERC. Her research groups at the EMBL in Heidelberg and the University of Cologne study the biophysics of cell shape changes.
After receiving her PhD at the Basel Institute for Immunology, Switzerland, Dr. Leptin moved to the LMB in Cambridge, UK, became a group leader at the Max-Planck-Institute in Tübingen and then professor at the Institute of Genetics, Cologne. She spent time on sabbaticals or as visiting professor at UCSF, the École normale supérieure in Paris, and the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute at Hinxton. From 2010 to 2021, Dr. Leptin was the Director of EMBO. She is an elected member of EMBO, the Academia Europaea, the German National Academy, Leopoldina, an Honorary Fellow of the UK Academy of Medical Sciences, and holds an Honorary Doctorate from the EPFL, Lausanne.