Formation | 1964 |
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Purpose | Promote life science research in Europe and beyond |
Headquarters | Heidelberg, Germany |
Membership | 1,800 members [1] |
Director | Fiona Watt [2] |
Key people |
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Website | embo |
The European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) is a professional, non-profit organization of more than 1,800 life scientists. [1] Its goal is to promote research in life science and enable international exchange between scientists. It co-funds courses, workshops and conferences, publishes five scientific journals and supports individual scientists. The organization was founded in 1964 [3] [4] and is a founding member of the Initiative for Science in Europe. As of 2022 [update] the Director of EMBO is Fiona Watt, a stem cell researcher, professor at King's College London and a group leader at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory.
EMBO funds or co-funds over 90 meetings involving more than 11,000 participants every year. [5]
EMBO publishes five peer-reviewed scientific journals: The EMBO Journal , [6] EMBO Reports , [7] Molecular Systems Biology , [8] EMBO Molecular Medicine , [9] and Life Science Alliance , [10]
The European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) was launched in July 1964 after a group of European biologists had discussed the idea earlier at a meeting in Ravello. [4] [11] The initial goals of EMBO consisted of creating a central European laboratory for life sciences and increasing scientific interactions between researchers in Europe. [11] At the Ravello meeting, Max Perutz was elected as the first EMBO chairman and John Kendrew as secretary general. [11]
Initially, 140 biologists were elected EMBO members and in 1969, the European Molecular Biology Conference (EMBC) was set up as a political body with 14 countries as initial members. [11] [12] Since 1964, scientists have been elected annually as members of EMBO based on excellence in research. [13] [1] There are currently more than 1,800 Members of the European Molecular Biology Organization, 90 of whom have received the Nobel Prize. [14] As of 2018, the EMBC has 30 member states, two associate member states (India, Singapore) and two co-operation partners (Chile (CONICYT), Taiwan (MOST and Academia Sinica)). [15]
In 1982, the EMBO Journal was launched, in 1986, the EMBO Gold Medal, an annual award for young scientists, was established. The "Young Investigator Program" which awards grants to young professors was established in 2000 and four additional journals were launched in 2000 ( EMBO Reports ), 2005 ( Molecular Systems Biology ), 2008 ( EMBO Molecular Medicine ) and 2019 ( Life Science Alliance ). Life Science Alliance is co-published with Rockefeller University Press and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory Press. In 2022, Fiona Watt was appointed sixth director of EMBO succeeding the previous EMBO Directors Raymond Appleyard, John Tooze, Frank Gannon, Hermann Bujard and Maria Leptin.
In 2011, EMBO established a Policy Programme which interacts with policymakers and provides analysis of concerns emerging from advances in scientific research. [4]
Closely affiliated organisations to EMBO include the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), and The Federation of European Biochemical Societies (FEBS) which like EMBO, primarily operate in the European Research Area (ERA).
The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) is an intergovernmental organization dedicated to molecular biology research and is supported by 28 member states, one prospect state, and one associate member state. EMBL was created in 1974 and is funded by public research money from its member states. Research at EMBL is conducted by approximately 110 independent research and service groups and teams covering the spectrum of molecular biology and bioinformatics. The list of Groups and Teams at EMBL can be found at www
Sir David Charles Baulcombe is a British plant scientist and geneticist. As of 2017 he is a Royal Society Research Professor. From 2007 to 2020 he was Regius Professor of Botany in the Department of Plant Sciences at the University of Cambridge.
Søren Brunak is a Danish biological and physical scientist working in bioinformatics, systems biology, and medical informatics. He is a professor of Disease Systems Biology at the University of Copenhagen and professor of bioinformatics at the Technical University of Denmark. As Research Director at the Novo Nordisk Foundation Center for Protein Research at the University of Copenhagen Medical School, he leads a research effort where molecular-level systems biology data are combined with phenotypic data from the healthcare sector, such as electronic patient records, registry information, and biobank questionnaires. A major aim is to understand the network biology basis for time-ordered comorbidities and discriminate between treatment-related disease correlations and other comorbidities in disease trajectories. Søren Brunak also holds a position as a Medical Informatics Officer at Rigshospitalet, the Capital Region of Denmark.
Carlos Martínez Alonso, was born in Villasimpliz, in the province of León, on January 9, 1950. In 1974 he obtained a chemistry degree from the Universidad Complutense of Madrid. Four years later, in 1978, he obtained a Ph.D. in immunology by the same university. He was appointed President of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) from 2004 to 2008, and Secretary of State for Research in the Ministry of Science and Innovation from early 2008 to December 2009.
Martin Charles Raff is a Canadian/British biologist and researcher who is an Emeritus Professor at the MRC Laboratory for Molecular Cell Biology (LMCB) at University College London (UCL). His research has been in immunology, cell biology, and developmental neurobiology.
Maria Leptin is a German developmental biologist and immunologist, and the current President of the European Research Council. She was the Director of the European Molecular Biology Organization from 2010 to 2021.
The EMBO Gold Medal is an annual award of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) given to young scientists for outstanding contributions to the life sciences in Europe. Laureates receive a medal and €10,000 and are invited to receive the award and present their research at the annual EMBO Meeting and to write a review published in The EMBO Journal. Medallists can only be nominated by EMBO Members.
Sarah Amalia Teichmann is a German scientist who is head of cellular genetics at the Wellcome Sanger Institute and a visiting research group leader at the European Bioinformatics Institute (EMBL-EBI). She serves as director of research in the Cavendish Laboratory, at the University of Cambridge and a senior research fellow at Churchill College, Cambridge.
Mónica Bettencourt-Dias is a Portuguese biochemist and cellular biologist, who is the head of the Cell Cycle Regulation research group at the Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência. Her research involves cell cycle regulation, for which she has been recognized as the recipient of the Pfizer Award for Basic Research, the Keith Porter Prize from the American Society for Cell Biology and the Eppendorf Young European Investigator Award. She was also selected as a 2009 European Molecular Biology Organization Young Investigator Fellow and inducted as a member of the EMBO in 2015. Mónica Bettencourt-Dias was appointed Director of Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência in November, 2017.
David Chaim Rubinsztein FRS FMedSci is the Deputy Director of the Cambridge Institute of Medical Research (CIMR), Professor of Molecular Neurogenetics at the University of Cambridge and a UK Dementia Research Institute Professor.
John Tooze FRS was a British research scientist, research administrator, author, science journalist, former executive director of EMBO/EMBC, director of research services at the Cancer Research UK London Research Institute and a vice president at The Rockefeller University.
Membership of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) is an award granted by the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) in recognition of "research excellence and the outstanding achievements made by a life scientist".
Anne Jacqueline Ridley is professor of Cell Biology and Head of School for Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the University of Bristol. She was previously a professor at King's College London.
Denise P. Barlow was a British geneticist who worked in the field of epigenomics. Barlow was an elected member of European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), an honorary professor of genetics at the University of Vienna and recipient of the Erwin Schrödinger Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences. In 1991, she discovered the first mammalian imprinted gene, IGF2R, which codes for the insulin-like growth factor.
Elisa Izaurralde was an Uruguayan biochemist and molecular biologist. She served as Director and Scientific Member of the Department of Biochemistry at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen from 2005 until her death in 2018. In 2008, she was awarded the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, shared with Elena Conti, for "fundamental new insights into intracellular RNA transport and RNA metabolism". Together with Conti, she helped characterize proteins important for exporting mRNA out of the nucleus and later in her career she helped elucidate mechanisms of mRNA silencing, translational repression, and mRNA decay.
Sir Richard Henry Treisman is a British scientist specialising in the molecular biology of cancer. Treisman is a director of research at the Francis Crick Institute in London.
Sharon Tooze, FMedSci is an American cell biologist who has made significant contributions to the Autophagy field. She is a senior scientist at the Francis Crick Institute and was awarded European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) membership in 2010.
Orlando David Schärer is a chemist and biologist researching DNA repair, genomic integrity, and cancer biology. Schärer has taught biology, chemistry and pharmacology at various university levels on three continents. He is a distinguished professor at the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) and the associate director of the IBS Center for Genomic Integrity located in Ulsan, South Korea. He leads the three interdisciplinary research teams in the Chemical & Cancer Biology Branch of the center and specifically heads the Cancer Therapeutics Mechanisms Section.
Françoise Gisou van der Goot is a Swiss-Dutch cell biologist. She is a professor and the Vice President for Responsible Transformation at EPFL.
M. Madan Babu is an Indian-American computational biologist and bioinformatician. He is the endowed chair in biological data science and director of the center of excellence for data-driven discovery at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Previously, he served as a programme leader at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB).