Carsten Grashoff Receives Leopoldina Early Career Award
Carsten Grashoff, research group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry (MPIB) in Martinsried, has been honored with the Early Career Award of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina for his work in the field of cellular mechanobiology. The award is endowed with 30,000 euros and is funded by the Commerzbank Foundation. Grashoff will accept the award at the Leopoldina annual meeting in Rostock on Friday, September 19, 2014, from Leopoldina President Prof. Dr. Jörg Hacker and Prof. Dr. Jan-Hendrik Olbertz, member of the Board of Trustees of the Commerzbank Foundation.
Dr. Carsten Grashoff
© MPI of Biochemistry
The award recognizes Grashoff for his research in the field of mechanobiology. According to the Academy, his method of analyzing molecular force transmission is now used in many laboratories worldwide. It is particularly significant because Grashoff was the first to study and visualize nanoscale mechanical forces that affect individual proteins in the cellular context. The method makes it possible to investigate molecular processes that are responsible for the conversion of mechanical stimuli into biological responses and therefore play an important role in numerous biological processes. Since 2011 Grashoff is heading the research group “Molecular Mechanotransduction” at the MPIB, where he studies cellular force transmission mechanisms.
