Andrea Pauli awarded fellowship from Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole

The IMP’s Andrea Pauli is one of 28 scientists from around the world who have been named 2018 Whitman Center Fellows by the Marine Biological Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. As one of this year’s eight ‘Early Career Fellows’, Andrea Pauli will be able to conduct independent research at the famous Marine Biological Laboratory this summer and take advantage of its resources and collaborative scientific community.

Andrea Pauli studies the molecular mechanisms that drive fertilisation and embryonic development. Her research group uses zebrafish as a model organism, which she got to know during her first of several stays at Woods Hole: “I took the MBL zebrafish course in summer 2009 before I started my postdoc, so my first encounter with this wonderful model organism was at Woods Hole”, she explains.

“Woods Hole is an iconic place – anyone who has been there has fond memories of the highly collaborative atmosphere and curiosity-driven science and tends to come back. It’s a real honour to have been given the opportunity to spend some weeks this summer there for our own research. And what I find even better is that I am allowed to take students from my own lab along to give them the chance to experience this inspiring atmosphere first hand.”

Whitman Center Fellows are supported for up to 10 weeks to pursue research within the MBL’s strategic vision, which include in particular novel imaging and computation strategies; the comparative evolution, development, neuroscience, cell biology, and regeneration of marine organisms; microbial ecology; and the ecology of coastal systems.

“We look forward to the arrival of these outstanding investigators over the coming months and to their integration into the MBL’s unique environment of collaborative and risk-taking research,” said David Mark Welch, Director of the MBL Division of Research.

The MBL provides access to state-of-the-art instrumentation, innovative imaging technology, genome sequencing, model marine and freshwater organisms, and modern laboratory facilities. In addition, the MBL fosters a highly collaborative environment within its broad community of scientists from the Lab’s year-round resident program, Whitman Center, MBL Fellows program, and course faculty and instructors.

While at the MBL, Andrea Pauli will be joined by four of her PhD students in turns of three to four weeks. They will take projects to Woods Hole that are currently running in Andrea Pauli’s lab, albeit with a twist: “We will take advantage of the range of marine animals and invertebrate species that we will have access to at the Marine Research Center, experiment with imaging technologies that we have not yet used, and try to start tackling evolutionary aspects of our work”, said Andrea Pauli. “I think this visit will be a great opportunity to broaden our horizon and to ‘think-out-of-the-box’. It will also enable us to do experiments that we would normally not be able to do, and to form potential collaborations for future work with scientists from all over the world.”

Whitman Center Early Career Fellows 2018

Lillian Fritz-Laylin, University of Massachusetts, Amherst (USA)
Liam Holt, New York University School of Medicine (USA)
Lynn Kee, Stetson University (USA)
Maryna Lesoway, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (USA)
Andrea Pauli, Institute of Molecular Pathology (Austria)
Janet Sheung, Vassar College (USA)
Victoria Sleight, University of Cambridge (UK)
Shigeki Watanabe, Johns Hopkins University (USA)

Further Information

More about Andrea Pauli's lab: 
https://www.imp.ac.at/groups/andrea-pauli/
http://paulilab.org/

Whitman Center at the Marine Biological Laboratory, Woods Hole