We thank all the CeMM members and Alumnae/Alumni, as well as our stakeholders, collaboration partners and friends for making 2024 a successful year. We deeply appreciate their commitment to continuous improvement and their openness to embracing new endeavors.

We congratulate CeMM Adjunct PI Nuno Maulide for an ERC Advanced Grant, Georg Winter for an ERC Consolidator Grant and being part of a global Cancer Grand Challenges team, and Stefan Kubicek for an ERC Proof of Concept Grant, CeMM Adjunct PI Miriam Unterlass for taking over the leadership of the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research in Würzburg, and CeMM Adjunct PI Jörg Menche for becoming Director of the Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Network Medicine. 

We welcomed Abdel Rahman Abdel Fattah as new CeMM Principal Investigator, and AITHYRA, the new Research Institute for Biomedical Artificial Intelligence of the OeAW and supported by BIS, as our sister institute under the leadership of Michael Bronstein and Anita Ender. AITHYRA can be sure of CeMM support and friendly competition to spur each other on to top performance and scientific breakthroughs!

CeMM Director Giulio Superti-Furga stood out most among the awards and prizes in 2024. He received the Wilhelm Exner Medal, the Lennart Philipson Award at EMBL, and was awarded the Austrian Cross of Honour for Science and Art, First Class, by the Austrian President Alexander Van der Bellen. CeMM warmly congratulates Giulio Superti-Furga on his significant achievements and this well-deserved and honorable recognition!

The EU-LIFE Community Meeting and EU-LIFE Utopia Conference on Artificial Intelligence organized by CeMM Admin and the teams of CeMM PI André Rendeiro and CeMM Adjunct PI Jörg Menche took place in Vienna, and being the Chair of EU-LIFE, Giulio Superti-Furga published an EU-LIFE Charter of Independent Life Science Research Institutes in 2024. 10 principles encompass excellence, independence, training, internationality and inclusivity, mission focus, technological advancement, administrative innovation, cooperation, societal impact, and public engagement. The aim is to inspire the establishment of new institutes to adhere to these principles and to raise awareness about their significance. 

Giulio Superti-Furga will become Director of the Biomedical Research and Biotechnology Center in Sicily, and therefore the Search for a new CeMM Scientific Director has already started. The Austrian Academy of Sciences supported by an international hiring committee of top scientists and entrepreneurs is seeking an outstanding scientist and visionary leader at a mid-career age to follow the founding Director Giulio Superti-Furga. The Scientific Director of CeMM will share the management and CEO leadership role with Anita Ender, Managing Director of CeMM and AITHYRA. We invite you to have a look at our previous research reports to learn more about the research, life, creativity and facts at CeMM, and ask you to please share this job opening within your network. Feel free to contact us if you have any questions. Application deadline is 10.1.2025. 

CeMM sends you warm wishes for a joyful holiday season and a happy and successful start into the New Year!