The scheme supports life scientists who have been leading their research group for less than four years and have already made outstanding scientific contributions to their field.
EMBO Young Investigators receive a financial award of €15,000 and can apply for additional grants of up to €10,000 per year. They also benefit from numerous networking opportunities for themselves and their team, mentorship by EMBO members, training in areas such as research leadership and management skills, and access to core facilities at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg.
“For me, being selected by EMBO is truly a great honor – it shows that our work is recognized by the international community and is an inspiration to do even better.” – says Boyan, who joined the Pioneer Campus in 2018 and is also an affiliated member at the Biomedical Center at LMU. “I want to thank all the members of the lab who were instrumental in this achievement – this award is also very much also a recognition of their hard work and outstanding creativity.“ – says Boyan.
Boyan’s research – the epigenetic landscape in neurodevelopment, -evolution and -diseases
Boyan's team deciphers the genetic and epigenetic blueprints of brain development and evolution, thereby unravelling new paradigms at the interplay of transcription factors, chromatin topology and the control of gene expression in vivo.
Boyan’s lab tackles a central issue in cell fate determination, the analysis and integration of several epigenetic layers including 3D genome organization, DNA methylation, chromatin accessibility and RNA expression. He leads an inclusive, multidisciplinary team that recently established pioneering techniques to assess these epigenetic levels of regulation simultaneously in single cells (ref to his Nat Neuro).
Further, his group explores evolutionary systems and deploys massively paralleled CRISPR-perturbation screens- for the in-vivo interrogation of causal, molecular-mechanistic underpinnings of one of the most complex biological structures on the planet – the (human) brain, specifically the (human) cortex.
We are extremely proud that Boyan’s scientific contributions have been recognized at the prestigious EMBO Young Investigator level and are convinced that Boyan will translate the affiliated opportunities in the continuation of his work that addresses fundamental and disease-relevant aspects of neuro-development.
EMBO, the European Molecular Biology Organization,promotes through the EMBO Young Investigator Program outstanding junior researchers in all of the life sciences. EMBO Young Investigators are group leaders establishing their independent lab and research program. Central to the four year EMBO Young Investigator Program is the network aspect, encouraging regular meetings of this community, enabling interdisciplinary collaborations and lab visits. Unlike many other such programs, EMBO extends access to its training and networking activities to lab members (students and postdocs of its EMBO Young Investigators).
The Helmholtz Pioneer Campus is an innovation campus with a startup culture at the Helmholtz Zentrum München. HPC stands for the intelligent fusion of biomedical sciences, engineering and digitization. Teams of top scientific talents from all over the world work together on the development of novel solutions that makes a difference in the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases. HPC aspires the values of Hermann von Helmholtz (1821-1894), a physician and physicist, polymath and science pioneer.