So honored to be invited by Julien Courchet and Tommy Lewis to be a speaker at their Minisymposium on “Mechanisms for local regulation of axonal RNA and organelle biology” during NeuroFrance 2023 in Lyon. I enjoyed the talks, the city and the french cuisine! Merci, Julien!

“Was lange wärt, wird endlich gut.”

German saying

Back in 2019, we became part of a consortium to investigate the mechanisms of cell death decisions, that determine whether a cell will undergo programmed cell death, or not, and if it does, by which pathway. After a few iterations and a splendidly organized reviewing session at the beautiful lake Konstanz, our consortium got funded by the DFG (Deutsche Forschungs Gemeinschaft, German research council). Many thanks to Simone, who joined me here and did splendid work defending our project at her poster!

The first Harbauer lab retreat took us to the TUM Research Station in the Alps just beyond Berchtesgaden, and we invited the Perocchi lab to join us for some good talks on mitochondria, Calcium and more. Even though the weather was rainy, we enjoyed the stay and a few brave ones even walked all the way back after our visit to the salt mine to the lodge. The shorter way up to the Zinkenstüberl and the alpine coaster “Keltenblitz” was easier to do, even though it meant hiking from Germany to Austria.

I was really impressed with the creativity of my students when it was time for us research groups and the Denk department to organize the happy hour for the Institute. Since the date was May fifth, and there for very close to StarWars Day (May, the forth), they took this as our theme and ran with it. Including amazing costumes, light sabers and a great photoshop job. I only contributed the cup cakes.