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2017: Dr. Manuel Etzkorn

Der diesjährige Ulrich-Hadding-Forschungspreis wurde am 12. September 2017 an Dr. Manuel Etzkorn (Institut für Physikalische Biologie, Prof. Willbold) für seine Leistungen zur Entwicklung neuer NMR-Methoden und deren Anwendung an komplexen biologischen Systemen verliehen. Dabei kombiniert Herr Etzkorn äußerst erfolgreich und konsequent die im Laufe seiner bisherigen wissenschaftlichen Karriere erworbene herausragende Expertise in der Methodenentwicklung für NMR-Spektroskopie sowie in der Entwicklung neuer Methoden für die Biochemie. Dies ermöglicht eine völlig neuartige Untersuchung biologischer Systeme, welche bisher nicht zugänglich waren, wie z.B. den äußerst komplexen Vorgang der Membranproteinfaltung. Der Preis ist mit 5.000,- € dotiert.

Wissenschaftlicher Werdegang

Dr. Etzkorn and his young investigator group study the structure and function of challenging biological systems to better understand molecular processes that are essential for life and to identify new possibilities to modulate these processes e.g. for therapeutic purposes. The group is affiliated to the Institute of Physical Biology (Prof. Dieter Willbold).

-    Dr. Etzkorn studied Physics from 1999 to 2004 at the University of Göttingen and the University La Laguna (Spain)

-    In his doctorate from 2005 to 2008 at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Dr. Etzkorn worked on solid-state NMR method development and application in structural biology. Dr. Etzkorn published 14 papers including 4x JACS, 2x Angewandte and 1x Nature Structural Biology (most as first author) during his PhD, completed his PhD “summa cum laude” and obtained offers for PostDoc positions from Harvard, the MIT, Berkeley and Cambridge university.

-    From 2009 to 2012 he joined the group of Prof. Wagner at Harvard Medical School, Boston and the MIT-Harvard Center of Magnetic Resonance, Cambridge to investigate the function of pharmacologically highly relevant so-called G-protein coupled receptors. For this work, Dr. Etzkorn obtained a stipend from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD).

-    In 2013 Dr. Etzkorn was awarded an Emmy Noether grant of the DFG in the amount of approx. 1.5 Mio. €, to start his own independent young investigator group at the Institute of Physical Biology at the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf and at the Institute of Complex Systems at Forschungszentrum Jülich.

-    His work is further supported by the EU Horizon 2020 program and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

-    His group currently focuses on biochemical and biophysical method development and their direct application to obtain better insights into complex biological systems.

-    Up to now Dr. Etzkorn’s work has been cited well over 1000 times.

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