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Founding Director of MPI-CBG will lead Europe's life sciences laboratory
To the point:
EMBL Council selected Anthony A. Hyman as next Director General: In his new role, Hyman will be responsible for overall leadership, strategic direction, and management of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL).
Mandate will commence on 31 March 2026: Hyman will assume his role at the EMBL in Heidelberg in April 2026, taking over EMBL’s leadership from Interim Director General Peer Bork and Interim Executive Director Ewan Birney.
At its winter meeting, the Council of EMBL selected Anthony A. Hyman, who is currently a Director at the Max Planck Instititute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG), as EMBL’s next Director General. Hyman’s mandate will begin on 31 March 2026, when he will take over EMBL’s leadership from Interim Director General Peer Bork and Interim Executive Director Ewan Birney.
“I am pleased to announce the decision by the EMBL Council to elect Anthony Hyman as future EMBL Director General,” says Peter Becker, EMBL Council Chair. “Tony witnessed the spirit of EMBL early on in his splendid career. He is a visionary and experienced scientist, who is very well suited to leading EMBL as it continues to innovate and build on its strong foundations.”
“I will be joining EMBL as its next Director General at a moment when the life sciences are changing rapidly, and when the institute’s role across Europe has never been more important,” says Hyman. “New technologies are giving us access to molecular, cellular, and tissue-level information at a precision and scale that simply did not exist a decade ago. Together with modern computational approaches, including AI, this creates a real opportunity to connect molecular mechanisms to the organisation of cells and tissues in ways that were not possible before.
Hyman continues, "My new position will greatly benefit from the expertise I gained at MPI-CBG, where I was one of the founding directors in 1998. Everyone needs some luck in life, and mine was to be given the opportunity to move to Dresden and be involved in founding this institute. It has been an honor to be part of building this institute in Dresden, and I would like to express my gratitude to all my colleagues at MPI-CBG and to the Max Planck Society for these fulfilling 25 years."
“This is a great opportunity for Tony, and we are happy to see him take on this new challenge," says Stephan Grill, Managing Director of the MPI-CBG. “At the same time, Tony will be deeply missed here at MPI-CBG. He has been a key part of our success as one of the founding directors. But, we are looking forward to the chance to strengthen the connections between MPI-CBG and EMBL in the future!”
Hyman is one of four founding directors of, and group leader at, the MPI-CBG in Dresden, Germany. He held the role of the institute’s Managing Director from 2010-2013 and from 2021-2023 and currently also holds a Professorship of Molecular Biology at Technische Universität Dresden, Germany.
From 1993 to 1999, Hyman was a Group Leader and Visiting Senior Scientist at EMBL Heidelberg. He studied Zoology at University College London before moving to the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, MRC in Cambridge, England for his doctoral research. He obtained his PhD in 1988 (awarded by King’s College, Cambridge University), and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California San Francisco, USA.
Hyman’s research focuses on unravelling the intricacies of biological condensates and phase separation in health and disease. Biomolecular condensates are a class of membrane-less organelles that carry out different functions within the cell. The research group of Anthony Hyman studies how phase separation impacts the formation of such membraneless compartmentalisation of macromolecules inside living cells. Understanding how and why condensates form and how they can transform into irreversible protein aggregates has important relevance for studying neurodegenerative diseases like ALS and Alzheimer’s disease.
His research has received some of the highest accolades, including the EMBO Gold Medal (2003), the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize (2011) for his work on microtubules and cell division, the Körber European Science Prize (2022), and the Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences (2023) for discovering a fundamental mechanism of cellular organisation mediated by phase separation of proteins and RNA into membraneless liquid droplets. Hyman is an elected member of EMBO (2000), the Academia Europaea (2014), the National Academy of Sciences (2020), the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina (2021), and a corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (2023).
Press Release of EMBL: https://www.embl.org/news/people-perspectives/embl-council-announces-next-embl-d...
Prof. Anthony Hyman
hyman@mpi-cbg.de
https://www.mpi-cbg.de/news-outreach/news-media/article/anthony-hyman-to-become-...
Portrait of Prof. Anthony A. Hyman
Quelle: Sven Döring
Copyright: Sven Döring
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Portrait of Prof. Anthony A. Hyman
Quelle: Sven Döring
Copyright: Sven Döring
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