ERC Grant awarded to another ETH researcher
Another ETH researcher receives an ERC Starting Grant: biochemist Benoît Kornmann. He wants to explore how organelles in cells are organised and how they communicate with each other.
Dr Benoît Kornmann is a Swiss and French citizen, born in 1977 in Geneva. He studied and obtained his PhD in Geneva. After completing his doctoral thesis, he went to the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) for a 3-year postdoctoral training programme. In 2011, he joined the Institute of Biochemistry at ETH Zurich. Soon after his start, he was awarded a Swiss National Science Foundation professorship.
Kornmann’s lab team is interested in the organisation of cellular structures called organelles. These organelles perform very specific functions. While many of them have been studied independently, little is known on how organelles integrate into an intracellular network. Indeed, the cell is literally packed with organelles, but remarkably they are not randomly placed inside the cell. Instead, they are arranged in specific ways in relation to each other. Some of them are even connected. This organisation allows organelles to communicate and exchange resources and information, which is crucial for the cell to function harmoniously.
With the ERC grant, Kornmann wants to gain an understanding of how the organelles are positioned and connected, how this organisation allows the exchange of components and information, and how inter-organelle communication helps the cell to function harmoniously. As many of the organelles are involved in various serious diseases such as Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer’s disease and type 2 diabetes, among others, this research may uncover important processes in the etiology of these diseases.