Juergen Knoblich is a senior scientist and deputy scientific director of the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna. He work mainly looks at neural stem cells, their asymmetric cell division and growth control.
Knoblich studied biochemistry at the University of Tübingen, molecular biology at University College London and moved to the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology Tübingen, where he received his doctorate in 1994. From 1994 to 1997 he was a post-doctoral student at the University of California, San Francisco.
Knoblich's lab uses Drosophila and mouse genetics to identify the molecular mechanisms that control asymmetric cell division in stem cell lineages. The lab has identified many of the key players that regulate this process in Drosophila neural stem cells. They found that defects in asymmetric cell division can lead to stem cell derived tumors. More recently, Juergen Knoblich's laboratory has begun to use mouse genetics to understand how those mechanisms are conserved in vertebrates.
In 2009, Knoblich was awarded the Wittgenstein Prize for his work on asymmetric cell division. He became an elected member of the EMBO council in 2014.
