Helmholtz

Ulrika Beitnere joined the Max Delbrück Center as a senior scientist in Maike Sander’s group, re-establishing the lab and uncovering mechanisms in diabetes. Previously, she worked at UC Davis on a rare disorder called Angelman syndrome. Helmholtz Monthly spoke to her for its “1 in 45,000” series.

Scientific infrastructure is highly specialized and energy-intensive. During a kick-off event of the Helmholtz Competence Network for Climate-Friendly Construction in Berlin, experts from both the Helmholtz centers and the construction industry discussed how it can be designed to be climate-friendly.

The Max Delbrück Center in Berlin and Heidelberg University will found a new Helmholtz Institute for Translational AngioCardioScience (HI-TAC) in Mannheim and Heidelberg. The Helmholtz Senate voted in favor of the institute, which will integrate vascular biomedicine, systems biology and heart research.

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.

Dagmar Kainmüller develops computational methods for analyzing vast quantities of image data. On October 1, 2022, she was named Professor of Integrative Imaging Data Sciences at the University of Potsdam.

Digitalization is having a rapid impact in the field of medicine, with data sciences and AI offering ever-increasing benefits for the development of new vaccines and drugs. Pfizer manager Peter Albiez discusses how graduate schools like HEIBRiDS are helping meet the enormous demand for specialists in the data sciences.

Gary Lewin conducts research at MDC on signaling in human bodies. He looks at how the sense of touch and pain function, especially in the naked mole rat. It can survive for a very long time without oxygen, is largely insensitive to pain, and lives remarkably long. In the Resonator podcast, Lewin talks about these animals and his research.

Demand is high for young scientists who are well versed in the data sciences as well as in another discipline. At the Helmholtz graduate school HEIBRiDS in the Berlin-Brandenburg region, eleven institutions have teamed up to train scientists. The range of subjects they cover spans everything from genetic research to astronomy.

Biochemist Sabrina Geisberger researches the effects of salt consumption on our health at the Max Delbrück Center. We asked her five questions.