Jürgen Knoblich

Since 2018, he is the interim Scientific Director of the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology[2] (IMBA) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna.

In 1989 he transferred to the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen, where he completed his doctoral thesis in 1994 on the role of Cyclin proteins in controlling cell cycle progression during development.

In 1994 he became a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, where he worked with Dr. Yuh Nung Jan until 1997.

Upon his return to Europe he joined the Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna, Austria as a group leader.

Since stem cell mitosis is a highly conserved process, results found in fruit flies can be transferred to humans and thereby help to gain insights into general tumor neogenesis[16] Additionally, Knoblich and his group were the first to carry out a genome-wide in vivo RNAi screen to demonstrate for the first time, that it is possible to simultaneously analyze gene functions across the whole genome of an organism in a tissue specific manner.

Knoblich’s research group at IMBA is trying to identify more of these genes in order to develop less invasive therapies for cancer in the future.