News & Articles

In January 2005, Josef Penninger, scientific director of the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA), will be the first speaker of the newly launched lecture series by the Office of Science and Technology at the Austrian Embassy in Washington, D.C.

The series will feature recipients of the “Austrian Scientist of the Year Award,” an award created by the Austrian Club of Education and Science Journalists.

Josef Penninger ventured into research and became a successful scientist. For Penninger himself, the key to his success is passion. He is convinced that his competitive advantage lies in the intellectual curiosity and the determination he brings to his research.

At the same time he is willing to take risks and constantly explore new paths. It was that streak that brought him to Canada in the first place. His postdoctoral stint under immunologist Tak Mak at the Ontario Cancer Institute, Princess Margaret Hospital in Toronto was meant to be a temporary assignment. However, unable to find an interesting position in Europe, he decided to stay on.

In hindsight this decision was a blessing in disguise because it opened the door for Penninger to Amgen, the world’s largest biotech corporation. Tak Mak handpicked Penninger to join him at the Amgen lab as principal investigator. It was at Amgen, where Penninger—working with knockout mice—got the opportunity to excel. He earned his laurels first in heart disease, followed by groundbreaking work on the osteoprotegerine ligand and the discovery of AIF, the gene that controls cell death.

An ardent believer in innovation, Penninger attributes equal importance to an interdisciplinary approach in science. “To join seemingly unrelated pieces and create something new, that is what science is all about,” Penninger stated in an interview with life-science.at. More recently, Penninger emphasized that people need to keep their minds open to be able to explore new territory. “All great discoveries occur when scientists wander off the beaten track, pursuing unpopular, unknown ideas or merge knowledge from disparate fields,” he said at the Keys Memorial Lecture held on October 4, 2004 at Trinity College in Toronto.

“Wandering off the beaten track” is one thing. But jumping from one idea to another can be an extremely risky undertaking in science. More than once was Penninger warned by colleagues to be careful about projects.  But Penninger would not hear any of it. He kept on churning out ideas. By 2002, he was a full professor at the Departments of Immunology and Medical Biophysics at the University of Toronto. In little over a decade Penninger published some 200 articles, books and research papers. The sheer number of prizes and awards he received is overwhelming. The 40-year-old researcher was included several times in Canada’s 'Top 40 Under 40' list. In 2002, the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research named Penninger one of Canada's top 20 scientists. Three years in a row he was named into ISI’s Top 10 list of the "hottest" scientists in the world.

Penninger’s departure from Canada in 2002 and his subsequent return to Austria did not diminish his scientific standing in the least. The virtual stock exchange of Nobel prize winners, a research project by the University of Frankfurt, lists Penninger as “hot commodity.” More recently, in October 2004 he was elected “Austrian Scientist of the Year 2004.” No wonder that the Austrian Academy of Sciences considered itself extremely lucky to have gained a world-class scientist for its new facility—the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology.

When Josef Penninger became the head of IMBA, the Austrian science community hailed the move as an important sign of Austria’s importance in the area of biotechnology. Penninger already was a highly renowned scientist in Canada by that time, who had “uncovered several ‘Holy Grails’ in molecular and developmental medicine,” according to media reports. “The dream is to build a center in Europe, where people can share ideas,” Penninger said at his October address for the Keys Memorial Lecture at Trinity College in Toronto. He openly admits that he wanted to stay in North America and that the “decision to return to Austria was a very difficult one, primarily for private reasons.“

At the same time he felt that the offer from the Austrian Academy of Sciences to head IMBA was too good to turn down. “With the enlargement of the European Union, Vienna has become one of the most interesting cities for innovation,“ Penninger says. “Vienna has all of a sudden become the gateway to 40 million well-educated people,“ he adds.

Penninger’s personal ideas set aside; one must concede that the offer by the Austrian Academy of Sciences to head IMBA was indeed an attractive one, an offer not easily to be disregarded. Penninger will undoubtedly be a major player in the Austrian science community. Almost unprecedented in Austria, he has enormous freedom to administer a generous research budget. Over the next couple of years, IMBA is set to increase its staff to 150 researchers. Unlike universities and other institutions, IMBA researchers will be unburdened by obligations to teach or to write grants. The mouse facility at IMBA—meant to eventually serve Central and Eastern Europe—is key to Penninger’s team.

Being involved in the Euro-Thymaide project, Prof Penninger is leading a specific work package by targeting the role of Cbl-family proteins in tolerance, autoimmunity and allergy. Its contribution in this project is an important objective of the Euro-Thymaide FP6 Integrated Project (www.eurothymaide.org)

Prof Penninger contribution will be to further elucidate the role of Cbl-b in immune tolerance and autoimmunity in order to develop strategies focused on this important immunoregulatory pathway.

Penninger emphasizes the need for Europe to catch up with North America. “Good infrastructure is key to good science,” he underlines.
“It is a wasted effort to try to bring scientists back to Europe if funds and infrastructure are lacking,“ he says. “Good scientists are the essence. Not even Michael Schuhmacher can win a Formula One race with an old race car.“

While Penninger does not praise North America as a paradise for the sciences, he nonetheless feels that the North American “can do” attitude paired with the notion that research is international and that the best scientists need the best facilities still give America a competitive edge.

Heavy bureaucratic layers and stark hierarchical structures, in contrast, continue to burden Europe. Penninger has little appreciation for red tape. He feels that “good science” should be based on its merits and not judged by geographical importance or subjected to political peddling.