Oliver Mühlemann Editorial No. 13
Director NCCR RNA & Disease
Dear colleagues,
It is now 6 months since our last newsletter and as we are all slowly recovering from the coronavirus pandemic and the associated temporary shutdown of our labs, we are happy to finally return to the courant normal and present you here a new issue of The Messenger. Besides a summary of two recent publications from the groups of Stefanie Jonas and Jonathan Hall, the main feature of this issue is an insightful interview with Mike Hall, Grandseigneur of TOR and a great and inspiring colleague in our network. As for the career paths of many other scientists, you will see that curiosity, an open mind, passion, hard work and a portion of luck were also main ingredients for Mike’s seminal contributions to biology. When asked about his own role models, I started wondering how many of our younger researchers might actually have chosen Mike as their role model, which led me further to reasoning what is finally more important in a researcher’s career, the scientific discoveries or the training and mentoring of younger researchers. I believe the latter is more important, as it is the training and mentoring through which one influences the values, the culture and the spirit of the current and future research community, while the discoveries would have been made anyway by someone else sooner or later. I am curious about your opinion.
From the more philosophic to the profane: Our preparations for composing a strong phase 3 pre-proposal have started, thanks for your valuable contributions!
Oliver Mühlemann, Director NCCR RNA & Disease