Young talented researcher awarded large grant from the Novo Nordisk Foundation
At a ceremony in Copenhagen, M. Cemre Manav from the Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Aarhus University was officially awarded a 4-year postdoc grant from the Novo Nordisk Foundation. The grant is valued at Eur 535,525 (DKK 3,99 million) and will be used for a three years study in Cambridge and the fourth year back in Aarhus.
Cemre first came to Aarhus University in 2011 as an Erasmus Exchange student from Yildiz Technical University in Istanbul, Turkey. After her return to Istanbul, she applied for the Master’s program at the Department of Chemistry and Biotechnology Engineering, where she was awarded a full tuition waiver by the university for her entire Master’s Degree.
Following her Master’s degree, Cemre was employed as a PhD student in the laboratory of Ditlev Egeskov Brodersen from 2015 to 2018. Upon completing her PhD studies, she was awarded a two-year postdoc fellowship financed by the Lundbeck foundation to investigate a novel CRISPR-Cas system, where she gained more insights into the area of single-particle Cryo-EM.
During a short stay in the laboratory of Lori Passmore in MRC-LMB, Cemre was introduced to mRNA processing in eukaryotes and how complicating these mechanisms are. Recent developments in the area of Cryo-EM along with her studies have been the driving force behind her interest in the eukaryotic mRNA processing mechanisms, which is a great fit for studying mRNA deadenylation processes.
With the Novo Nordisk Foundation's research grant, Cemre will get significant hands-on experience with Cryo-EM as well as the opportunity of establishing herself as an independent researcher. In December 2019, Cemre will join Dr. Lori A. Passmore’s laboratory at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge for the three-year period, where she aims to determine the structure of a targeted mRNA deadenylation multi-enzyme complex.
The grant also allows her to return to Ditlev E. Brodersen’s laboratory for the fourth year, where she will finalize her work. Cemre says that she is very excited about this new chapter in her research career and is looking very much forward to her stay in Cambridge. Furthermore, she adds, that she is also looking forward to coming back to Aarhus University to continue her collaboration with the brilliant scientists there.
For further information, please contact
Postdoc M. Cemre Manav
Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics
Aarhus University
cemremnv@mbg.au.dk