Cell scientist to watch – Angelika Harbauer

ABSTRACT Angelika is a group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence (MPI-BI, Munich, Germany) and holds a tenure-track position at the Technical University of Munich. She received her master's degree and PhD from the University of Freiburg, under the supervision of Chris Meisinger and Klaus Pfanner, where she studied the role of phosphorylation events in the mitochondrial TOM complex. For her postdoctoral studies, she moved to Harvard Medical School (USA), where she worked with Tom Schwarz on mitochondrial RNA hitchhiking. In 2019, Angelika returned to Germany to establish her own research group at the MPI-BI, focusing on how neurons shape mitochondria, and, in turn, how mitochondria influence neuronal function. We spoke with Angelika over Zoom to learn more about her career, her thoughts on mentorship and how studying improv theatre helped her overcome stage fright.