© Katrin Boes / MPI-CBG
Joining the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) from ETH Zürich, Matthias Muhar started his research on “Functional genomics of proteome remodeling” in November. At MPI-CBG, Matthias wants to pursue high-throughput genetic studies to understand how protein turnover is regulated. His group will focus on the role of protein degradation in stem cells and neurons which are highly sensitive to mutations that alter protein turnover.
“It's amazing that neural stem cell research has a long history in Dresden and that we have very well-organized facilities here at MPI-CBG that enable us to model those mutations in complex tissues,” says Matthias Muhar. “I'm also very keen on learning organoid biology here at the institute. Cerebellar organoids and cerebral organoids will be my main organoid system.”
Matthias Muhar studied biology at the University of Vienna and finished his PhD in 2018 in molecular biology at the Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP), also in Vienna. During his PhD, he worked on the development of genetic and transcriptomic tools for the study of gene regulation in leukemia. In 2018, he received the Life Science Research Award of the Austrian Association of Molecular Life Sciences and Biotechnology. Matthias moved to Zürich in 2019 to work as a postdoctoral researcher at ETH, where he looked at the end of gene expression and what happens when gene products, proteins, are removed by cells. As of November 2025, Matthias is a research group leader at MPI-CBG.