Team:Goettingen/Human Practice/Panel Discussion

Prof. Michael Bölker received his PH.D at the Free University of Berlin in Biochemistry and his habilitation on the fields of genetic at the University of Munich. Since 1997 he is the Professor of genetics of the University Marburg and works mainly with the fungal model organism Ustilago maydis. In detail his work group researches in the fields of signal transduction, morphogenesis, regulation of cytokinesis and glycolipid production.
In this year he undertakes the supervision of the iGEM Team Marburg which is also participating in the iGEM contest for the first time! We are very delighted to welcome him in Göttingen, exchange experiences and hear about his point of view on Synthetic Biology!
Click here to get to the homepage of AG Bölker!

Sascha Karberg achieved his diploma in Biology and scientific journalism at the Free University of Berlin and worked subsequently as a freelancer journalist. The main fields he is writing about are genetic engineering, biotechnology, pharmacological research, biology and medicine. His articles were published in many well-respected German journals e.g. “Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung”, Cell and Geo and his work was awarded with the “Heureka-Wissenschaftsjournalistenpreis 2004” and the “Glaxo-Smith-Kline-Publizistikpreis 2005”.
For he was also able to gather experience at the MIT through a Knight Science Fellowship, we are very eager to meet him and we are looking forward to get to know his opinion on Synthetic Biology!

Only today (24.8.) we luckily received the third acceptance to our invitation and we are glad to welcome Dr. Anna Deplazes Zemp to our information evening!
The Swiss biologist received her diploma on the fields of molecular biology, zoology and ethics for biologists at the University of Zürich where she also wrote her PH.D thesis in Biochemistry. After one year a postdoc and a fellowship of the Graduate Program for interdisciplinary Research in Ethics of the URPP Ethics she started to study philosophy and is now a research fellow at the Institute of Biomedical Ethics at the University of Zürich.
Her studies mainly focus on Synthetic Biology and the definition and creation of life and thus we are very eager to hear about Synthetic Biology from a ethical point of view!
To read more click here!

In addition, we are very pleased with the announcement of Dr. Günter Strittmatter to participate in our discussion. Dr. Strittmatter absolved his studies in biology at the University of Freiburg, where he also received his PhD. Subsequently he worked several years as a postdoc at the Rockefeller University of New York, USA. After his stay abroad he took a position as project manager at the Max Planck institute for breeding research in Köln. Here, he mainly worked on the genetic generation of fungal resistance in plants.
Afterwards, Dr. Strittmatter was employed as project manager for the company Planta Genetic Systems in Gent (PGS), Belgium for a year.
Since 1998 Dr. Strittmatter acts on behalf of KWS, our head sponsor, where he leads the institute for plant breeding. Hence we extend a warm welcome to him and are very excited to hear about the topic of Synthetic Biology from an enterpriser’s point of view.