Elly Margaret Tanaka (born 22 August 1965) is a biochemist and Scientific Director at the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (IMBA) in Vienna, Austria.
[1] Tanaka started her own lab at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) in Dresden (Germany) in 1999.
[3] In 2024, Tanaka joined the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (IMBA) as Scientific Director.
[4] The Mexican salamander species axolotl is Tanaka's main model system for her research and is also working to translate them to mouse and human tissue.
[5] Using innovative molecular biology and microscopy methods, she identified those stem cells that underlie the regeneration of limbs and the spinal cord.