Annette Schenck - Biography#

Annette Schenck studied Biotechnology at Berlin’s University of Technology, Germany. In 2003, she obtained her PhD and an award for the best thesis of the year from the University Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg, France, for her work on the molecular basis of Fragile X Syndrome. Her postdoctoral research at the Max Planck Institute for Cell Biology & Genetics in Dresden, Germany, unravelled the function of a novel endocytic organelle. In 2007, she successfully competed for a tenure-track research fellowship from the Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen, the Netherlands, to establish her independent research line systematically investigating the molecular, cellular and developmental basis underlying Intellectual Disability disorders. In 2008, she was awarded a VIDI grant, the most prestigious personal career award for mid-stage researcher from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). In the same year, she was promoted to Assistant Professor and tenured. In 2009 followed her promotion to Associate Professor. In 2020, she was awarded an NWO VICI grant and appointed full Professor in Translational Genomics of Neurodevelopmental Disorders.

Annette Schenck made significant contributions to science at all career stages, as documented by her publications (15 PhD publications, among them first authors in Neuron and PNAS, a postdoctoral first-author in Cell, and a continuous track record of high impact publications since). Her H-index is 30. Her papers have an average Impact factor of 10 and have been cited 60 times on average.

In the international evaluation of her VICI grant, she was ranked to be among the top 10%, if not 3-5%, of her peers (world leader; has pushed the boundaries; creative and innovative; impressive record; even as a Ph.D and postdoctoral worker, her science has been markedly different from the usual track of her mentors; in high esteem by the international scientific community). Her research was praised as fearless, collaborative and highly original.