When hearing about her new fellowship Dr Braunger said “I was thrilled to learn that I was awarded the fellowship and I’m super excited to become part of a network of inspiring scientists.” Similarly, Dr Monteiro was also very excited: “I am thrilled to be awarded this prestigious fellowship” he says. “It will allow me to pursue my scientific interests and hopefully provide a stepping stone on the path to being an independent researcher.”
Dr Braunger obtained her Ph.D. from the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, where she used structural biology to study the processing of newly made proteins at the endoplasmic reticulum membrane. She received the EMBO fellowship shortly after joining the lab of Professor Susan Lea. Her current project combines biophysical and structural techniques in order to shed light on the principles underlying activation of the complement system, which is a group of proteins with an important role in innate immunity.
The second new EMBO fellow, Dr João Monteiro, joined the lab of Professor Jordan Raff after receiving his Ph.D. from ITQB NOVA, a research institute affiliated with NOVA University Lisbon. His Ph.D. research focused on the mechanisms that coordinate the cell cycle of pathogenic bacteria. The research project for which he was awarded the new EMBO fellowship is to conduct super-resolution single-molecule studies of centrosome assembly, an essential process in cell replication.
EMBO Long-Term Fellowships are awarded by the European Molecular Biology Organization, an organisation which brings together over 1800 leading researchers, and promotes excellence in the life sciences in Europe and beyond. In the spring of 2019, EMBO awarded the Long-Term Fellowship to 95 candidates out of the hundreds that applied.
For more information about the fellowship visit https://www.embo.org/funding-awards/fellowships/long-term-fellowships.
Written by Shaked Ashkenazi