Grzegorz Sienski receives “Kirsten Peter Rabitsch Award” 2015

This year’s “Kirsten Peter Rabitsch” Award was presented to Grzegorz Sienski, a former PhD student in the Brennecke lab at IMBA. His work focuses on the silencing of genomic intruders.

Greg joined Julius Brennecke’s group in 2010 after studying in Poland and completed his PhD at IMBA at the end of 2014. In May of this year, he accepted a position at the MIT in Boston. His work illustrates the widespread influence of transposons and the piRNA pathway on chromatin patterns and gene expression. “I’m really grateful for the time I had at the VBC, because it is such a stimulating environment. Working on the Piwi pathway was especially exciting since we were only beginning to understand it’s full impact when I started, and this gave us the opportunity to really push the field”, said Greg after receiving the prize.

The award was initiated in honor of Kirsten Peter Rabitsch. He was a brilliant young scientist who had just completed his PhD at the IMP in 2006 and was about to start his career in the Knoblich Lab at IMBA when he died tragically while travelling South America. The prize, which is worth two thousand Euros, is jointly sponsored by the IMP and by Kirsten’s parents. It is awarded annually for the most outstanding discovery of a PhD-Student at either the IMP or IMBA.

About the Rabitsch Award
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