left: Ori Avinoam; right: Alexander von Appen ©picture left: private; picture right: MPI-CBG
The Minna-James-Heineman-Stiftung awarded two prestigious Heineman Grants to four outstanding young scientists from the Max Planck Society and the Weizmann Institute of Science. One of the funded projects is awarded to Alexander von Appen, research group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) in Dresden, Germany and to Ori Avinoam, research group leader at the Department of Biomolecular Sciences at the Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel. The two scientists received the grant for their project “The role of membraneless condensates in membrane fusion.” In the next three years, they want to investigate how protein phase separation mechanistically drives membrane fusion pore formation during cellular secretion. The collaboration will facilitate the understanding of this important process on both the molecular level and in the living organism.
The second funded project with the title “How protein synthesis wires the brain – from circuits to single cells” was awarded to Matthew Kraushar from the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Genetics, Berlin, Germany and to Yonatan Stelzer from the Department of Molecular Cell Biology at the Weizmann Institute of Science. Until 2025, the two Heineman Grants will fund those two research projects, one of which will be carried out by a German Principal Investigator together with an Israeli collaborator (project by Matthew Kraushar and Yonatan Stelzer) and the other by an Israeli Principal Investigator and a German collaborator (project by Ori Avinoam and Alexander von Appen).
About the Heineman Grant
The Minna-James-Heineman-Stiftung allocates every three to four years two research grants to young, highly qualified and talented scientists in the areas of biology, medicine and biomedical research at Max Planck Institutes and the Weizmann Institute of Science. The grants are devoted to strengthening German-Israeli cooperation in general and specifically between Max Planck Institutes and the Weizmann Institute of Science in scientifically promising and innovative research areas which are geared towards the future. The programme is managed by the Minerva Stiftung.