Kay Grünewald appointed new Scientific Director of CSSB

22 December 2021, by MIN-Dekanat

Photo: DESY/Meyer

Prof. Kay Grünewald

The Centre for Structural Systems Biology (CSSB) will be under new scientific management in 2022. Group leader Prof. Dr. Kay Grünewald from the Leibniz Institute for Experimental Virology (HPI) and the Department of Chemistry at the Universität Hamburg will be the new CSSB Scientific Director. On, 3 December 2021, the CSSB Council confirmed the CSSB Directorates election of Prof. Grünewald for a two-year term.

Prof. Grünewald joined CSSB in 2015 from Oxford University in the United Kingdom. In addition to leading the “Structural Cell Biology of Viruses” research group at CSSB, he is the scientific facility director for the multi-user cryo-EM facility and co-director of the advanced light and fluorescence microscopy (ALFM) core facility both located in the CSSB building. Prof. Grünewald is also the Speaker of the Leibniz ScienceCampus InterACt focused on the integrative analysis of pathogen-induced compartments.

“The current corona pandemic underscores both the importance of fundamental infection research and the necessity of multi-disciplinary scientific collaboration. CSSB with its state-of-art facilities and emphasis on collaborative research and its strong links to the partner institutions, is poised to make novel contributions to understanding the mechanisms of infectious disease,” states Grünewald “I am looking forward to this new task and to fostering CSSB’s scientific potential.”

Prof. Grünewald takes over from Prof. Dr. Chris Meier (Universität Hamburg) who has served as CSSB’s Scientific Director for the past four years. Prof. Meier will continue to support CSSB as a “out-going” Deputy Director. The management team will be completed by the new “in-coming” Deputy Director Prof. Dr. Holger Sondermann (DESY/University of Kiel). After serving 8 years as Deputy Director, Prof. Dr. Thomas Marlovits (UKE) will leave the management team. “What began as a concept paper is now a vibrant, flourishing research center,” states Marlovits “I have enjoyed working alongside my colleagues in the management team to transform the vision of a multidisciplinary research center into a reality.”

The CSSB Directorate would like to thank Thomas Marlovits for his dedication and commitment to CSSB over the last eight years. “He has been instrumental in shaping CSSB into an innovative research center at the forefront of its field in using integrated structural biology approaches to unveil key mechanisms in infection,” explains Meier.

Text: CSSB