The German Science Foundation recently renewed a grant to support a collaborative PhD training program between HMS and the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, through 2013. Ronald Desrosiers, HMS professor of microbiology and molecular genetics and director of the New England Primate Research Center (NEPRC), coordinates the research program, which focuses on immune system viruses.
Each year, two to three German students are selected to begin their doctoral research with an HMS faculty member at NEPRC or the Channing Laboratory at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Since the program’s inception in 2005, three students have graduated, and seven are currently engaged in research in HMS labs in Boston or Southborough.
Michaela Gack, the program’s first graduate, is now an HMS instructor in microbiology and molecular genetics. Gack’s research on innate immune responses to viral infections and viral immune evasion mechanisms has garnered international acclaim. Notably, she received one of three coveted GE & Science awards at the Nobel Prize ceremony in 2009 as well as the German Society of Immunology’s Otto Westphal Prize for best dissertation.
“The German Science Foundation and the joint graduate program gave me the wonderful opportunity to do my PhD studies in the highly inspiring and intellectual environment here at Harvard,” Gack said.
