Cell scientist to watch – Christian Behrends

Christian Behrends studied biology at the University of Konstanz in Germany, but did his Diploma thesis externally with Michael Ehrmann in the School of Bioscience at Cardiff University, UK. He then pursued his PhD degree in Franz-Ulrich Hartl's group at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany. For his postdoctoral work Christian received a Feodor Lynen Research Fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung, with which he moved to the US and joined the laboratory of J. Wade Harper at Harvard Medical School. In 2011, he received an Emmy Noether Research Grant from the German Research Foundation (DFG) and started his own independent group at the Medical School of Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. He is also a recipient of an ERC starting grant. Research in Christian's lab is focused on the basic mechanisms of autophagy, particularly concentrating on the role of ubiquitin signalling in autophagy, and the crosstalk between autophagy and other vesicular trafficking pathways.