Juergen Knoblich is the vice director of IMBA, the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology in Vienna, Austria. He obtained his PhD from the Max Planck Institute in Tübingen. After a postdoctoral period in the laboratory of Yuh Nung Jan at UCSF, San Francisco, he joined the Institute of Molecular Pathology (Vienna) as a group leader in 1997. In 2004, he moved to the newly founded IMBA where he became deputy director in 2005. Juergen Knoblich is a member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and the Academia Europea and has been awarded two advanced grants of the European Research Council. He has received the Wittgenstein prize, the Schroedinger award of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, the Sir Hans Krebs Medal of the Federation of European Biochemical Societies, the EMBO young investigator award, the FEBS anniversary award and the ELSO early career award.