Cell scientist to watch – Jörg Renkawitz

Jörg Renkawitz is an endowed Peter Hans Hofschneider Professor in Molecular Medicine at Ludwig Maximilians-University Munich, Germany. Following his bachelor and Master's degrees in biochemistry, during which he was first introduced to the field of cell motility, he completed his doctoral work with Prof. Dr Stefan Jentsch at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany, studying the mechanisms of DNA repair. Still intrigued by the mechanics of migrating cells, he moved to the Institute of Science and Technology in Vienna, Austria for his postdoc with Prof. Dr Michael Sixt, which cemented his passion for understanding how motile cells navigate their environments. In 2018, he started his own lab at Ludwig Maximilians-University Munich, and now applies his molecular expertise to unravel the mechanobiology of the immune system by combining omics approaches with engineered microenvironments and high-throughput imaging. We spoke with Jörg over Zoom to learn about his career path, rigorous approaches to experimental design and mentorship philosophy.