21 January 2025 – Lidia Wrobel, who is originally from Poland, has worked in four countries. During her PhD studies, which she carried out at the International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology (IIMCB) in Warsaw, she visited labs in Australia and Germany to receive training and generate data. Supported by an EMBO Postdoctoral Fellowship, she moved to the University of Cambridge, UK, after her PhD. She returned to the IIMCB to start her own group in autumn 2024 and has now received an EMBO Installation Grant. “I am very excited to get the EMBO Installation Grant. The funding is a great addition, but most important for me is to join the EMBO community and to be able to take part in different meetings and networks,” Wrobel says.
Asked about her motivation to become a scientist, Wrobel recalls her interest in animals and plants as a child: “I have always been interested in the natural world.” When she learned that human bodies are made up of cells, and that cells can be grown in a dish to study processes that happen in the body, she was fascinated.
Today Wrobel is intrigued by proteostasis in the nuclei of cells, particularly neurons. Her research focuses on protein quality control and degradation through autophagy and the ubiquitin-proteasome system. She plans to investigate how failures in proteostasis maintenance contribute to the early processes that lead to the onset of neurodegenerative diseases. “We don’t fully understand how proteostasis is controlled in the nucleus, making it difficult to grasp what goes wrong in disease,” she explains, highlighting the importance of studying these fundamental mechanisms.
