The Hyman Lab had a great time at the “International Meeting of the German Society for Cell Biology” in Heidelberg, celebrating “50 Years of Cell Biology: The Heart of Life Sciences—Past, Present, and Future.” The meeting was held in Heidelberg, where the DGZ was initially founded 50 years ago. It was an exciting event full of inspiring talks, familiar faces, and proud moments for our lab.
Day 1 – October 26
(Tony giving the keynote lecture)
The meeting started off strong with Tony giving one of the keynote lectures, setting the tone for an inspiring week. We were also thrilled to see Hyman Lab alumna Julia Mahamid deliver the Carl Zeiss Lecture titled “Enabling discovery by in-cell structural biology.” Julia was a postdoc in the lab from 2011 to 2017 and is now Group Leader and Head of Molecular Systems Biology at EMBL Heidelberg — it was wonderful to see her again and celebrate her success!
Day 2 – October 27
(Koichiro Takenaka presenting his talk)
Koichiro gave a short talk on “Thermodynamic control of P granule segregation in the C. elegans embryo.” He did a fantastic job presenting his PhD work.
(Silja Zedlitz receiving her award from Prof. Sandra Iden) (c) Benedikt Dürr
The day got even better when Silja received a DGZ Master Thesis Award 🏆 for her project “Minimal rhodamine probes for covalent protein labeling in live cells,” run in the lab of Prof. Kai Johnsson at MPI for Medical Research. We’re so proud of Silja! This award recognizes her creativity and dedication to developing new tools for live-cell imaging during her thesis project— a huge achievement and very well deserved.
👏 Big cheers to both Silja and Koichiro — you made the lab proud!
Day 3 – October 28
(Theresia Gutmann next to her poster) (c) Benedikt Dürr
Theresia presented her poster showcasing her exciting work!
The meeting wrapped up with another alumni highlight: Jay Gopalakrishnan gave a talk titled “Disrupting centrosome integrity impairs the DNA repair capability of patient-derived glioma stem cells.” Jay, who was a postdoc in the Hyman Lab in 2012, is now Professor for Cell Biology at the University of Jena, It’s always inspiring to see our alumni doing amazing work!
(c) Benedikt Dürr
All in all, DGZ meeting 2025 was a great event for the Hyman Lab — full of science, stories, and connections.