24.09.2014

Humboldt Professorship for University of Tübingen

Germany’s richest research prize brings plant geneticist Marja Timmermans to the Center for Plant Molecular Biology

The University of Tübingen has approval for a second prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Professorship. With Germany’s richest international research prize, plant geneticist Professor Marja Timmermans, currently working at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the US, can come to Tübingen in 2015. The Humboldt Professorship is awarded for five years and comes with up to €5m in funding. The scheme, run by the Humboldt Foundation and financed by the German research ministry, aims to attract leading scientists and academics to German universities.

How do plants form patterns of leaves along their stems? How are the differences between the top and the bottom of the leaves formed? Leaf development is Marja Timmermans’ special field. She is responsible for a number of discoveries which have attracted international attention, and her methods are applied in labs around the world. For instance, Timmermans has been able to explain the role of mobile RNA in the formation of leaves.

Timmermans, 49, is a Dutch national who studied first in the Netherlands, then at Rutgers University and Yale. Since 1998 she has been carrying out research at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in the US state of New York. She became an assistant professor there in 2001 and a full professor in 2009.

As Humboldt Professor at the Center for Plant Molecular Biology (ZMBP), Timmermans will build bridges between cutting-edge basic and applied research. The ZMBP is also seeking to specialize in research into maize – an area in which Timmermans has carried out significant research.

The University of Tübingen also hosts a 2012 Humboldt Professor – the renowned linguist Professor Rolf Harald Baayen, who came to Tübingen from the University of Alberta in Canada.

<link http: www.humboldt>www.Humboldt Professorship.de

Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen

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<link http: www.uni-tuebingen.de aktuell>www.uni-tuebingen.de/aktuell

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