Tobias Bonhoeffer joins the Board of Governors of the Wellcome Trust
The Max Planck director will serve in one of the world's largest charitable foundations
The British Wellcome Trust is, after the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the world's largest charity supporting biomedical research. Every year, the Wellcome Trust invests more than 900 million pounds into biomedical research in order to improve human and animal health. The scientific directions and research fields into which the Wellcome Trust invests are by and large determined by its Board of Governors. It consists of six scientific and four non-scientific members, all of which are characterized by their outstanding achievements, their leadership qualities, and their commitment to society at large. Now, with Tobias Bonhoeffer, director at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried, a German scientist was appointed for the first time as a new member to the Wellcome Trust's Board of Governors.
"I am deeply honored and look very much forward to working for the Wellcome Trust", was Tobias Bonhoeffer's first reaction to his appointment. "The Wellcome Trust is one of the scientific institutions that I most respect worldwide. I am thrilled and grateful that as governor I will have the opportunity to contribute to new and exciting activities that will have a fundamental impact on science and therefore ultimately on society." The charitable foundation supports biomedical basic research from single projects to the establishment of new research institutions, the transfer of technology, projects of public engagement as well as the understanding of medical research by linking them to art and culture.
The objectives of the Wellcome trust are very similar to those of the Max Planck Society," says Tobias Bonhoeffer, who was involved in shaping the research planning and strategy of the Max Planck Society as Chairperson of the Biology and Medicine Section. It is therefore not surprising that there have always been joint projects between the Max Planck Society and the Wellcome Trust, such as the Open Access Journal eLife.
Tobias Bonhoeffer studied physics at the University of Tübingen (Germany). In 1988 he earned his PhD from the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics and the University of Tübingen. As postdoc, he worked at the Rockefeller University in New York and at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research in Frankfurt. In 1993, he became the head of an independent research group at the MPI of Psychiatry in Munich. Since 1998 he is director at the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Martinsried where he investigates what happens in the brain, when it learns or forgets.
The Wellcome Trust was founded in 1936 by the legacy of the entrepreneur Sir Henry Wellcome. Together with Silas Mainville Burroughs, Wellcome founded the pharmaceutical company Burroughs Wellcome & Company in 1880 and introduced the sale of medicine in the form of pills one in England in 1884. In 1894, he initiated the establishment of multiple laboratories, which work with his company to bring together research and medicine. This is also the mission of the Wellcome Trust, which aims to promote best minds and projects in biomedical research in order to improve the well-being of humans and animals.