IIEG turns two - time to remember

On January 1st, 2015 the IIEG turns two - I think this is worth a few moments to remember. 

The year 2014 started with a great moment: our first Nature paper appeared in print! Actually, this was a really memorable moment; although the paper was published online a few weeks before, but having the printed version in our hands made it even more real. 

Besides our Nature paper, members of the IIEG co-authored several high impact papers (2x NEJM, 1x Nature, 2x Nature Genetics, 2x PLoS Genetics, and 1x Lancet) in 2014 (a complete list of all papers will be provided on our website). 

This is a pretty good outcome, however for 2015 we hope for more first and senior authorships. ;-)

For three of our members 2014 was a very important year because they defended sucessfully their MD (Ann-Kathrin), PhD (Christina) and MSc (Mariana), respectively. Once again: Congratulation!

The year 2014 was filled with more very memorable occassions like: child birth (welcome Rebekka!), Staffelmarathon, Bruno, Gründerpreis, christmas party, meetings in Amsterdam, Aying, Heidelberg and Munich etc.

Furthermore, the IIEG welcomed the team of "Black Peach Media", Prime Minister Thorsten Albig and his team, and at the open house event, people from Lübeck to the IIEG. All these visits brought a lot of fun not only for the guests but also for us as the host.

But most importantly, we welcomed several new members in our Institute, like Krishan, who will establish our zebrafish platform; Mariana, who started her PhD in the bioinformatic group; Sogol, who did her Master thesis in the experimental working group; Alex, who just finished her BSc working on Nexilin; and Beata, who joined the IIEG for an internship. 

I hope all of you feel/felt very well accepted.

The year 2015 will bring new challenges for all of us, like submitting grant proposals and hopefully getting them funded finally (research unit, SFB-TRR, and KFO), finalizing PhD theses, and in more general terms, to prepare for the future to be as competitive as before.

In my view, from a scientific perspective, we live in very exciting times (whole exome/genome sequencing, animal models, human iPS cell based models, CRISPR/Cas9, genome editing, integromic analyses, etc), with great opportunities to finally unravel (at least parts of) the genetics of coronary artery disease to eventually find new therapeutic targets.

This in mind, I very much look forward to 2015! I hope you too!

JE