Frank Bradke - Biography#

Present position: Senior Research Group Leader at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) and Full Professor (W3) at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn, Germany.

Education and academic career: Studies of Biochemistry, Anatomy and Developmental Biology in Berlin (FU) and London (UCL) (1989-95); Diploma (Biochemistry, FU, Berlin 1995); B.Sc. (Anatomy and Developmental Biology, UCL, London, 1995); Ph.D. in Biology (EMBL, Heidelberg, 1999); Postdoc at University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) & Stanford University (2000-2002); Habilitation in Neurobiology (2009); Head of an Independent Junior Research Group at the Max-Planck-Institute of Neurobiology, Martinsried (2003-2011); Certified Manager, St. Gallen, Helmholtz Management Academy (2011-2013); Head of a Senior Research Group at the DZNE and Full Professor (W3) at the Rheinische Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität Bonn (2011-present); Topic Coordinator (Molecular Signaling) at the Helmholtz Research Programme of Diseases of the Nervous System (2013-present).

Scholarships and awards: German National Academic Foundation (1992-1995); EMBO long-term fellowship (2000); HFSP long-term fellowship (2001-2002); CDA award from HFSP (2003); selected Top 100 heads of tomorrow (2007); offered a Full Professorship in Cellular and Molecular Neurobiology (W3) at the Charité, Berlin - declined (2010); offered a Full Professorship in Zoology (W3) at the University of Ulm - declined (2011); offered a Professorship (W3) in Developmental Biology at the University of Heidelberg - declined (2011); Schellenberg-Prize (2011); EMBO member (2013); offered a Full Professorship in Cellular and Neurobiology at the ETH, Zurich - declined (2014); Member of the Leopoldina, the German Academy of Sciences (2014); Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz-Prize-2016, the highest prize for Science in Germany (2016).

Research Area: Mechanisms of neuronal polarization and axonal regeneration.

Approaches:

• cell biological approaches to locally and reversibly manipulate neurons
  
• molecular biology (RNA interference, viral vectors)
  
• mouse genetics
  
• confocal and live cell imaging, in vivo imaging
  
• cytoskeletal dynamics, transcriptome analysis
  
• spinal cord injury models, whole tissue imaging
  

Third-Party Funding: > 6.000.000 € total since 2004