Becoming a lab head

In this new series, we feature FMI alumni and the diverse careers they have chosen after leaving our institute. We start with Sabine Krabbe who was a postdoc in the Lüthi group for eight years. In 2020, she started her own lab at a leading institute for brain research in Germany. The transition to her current position and her first two years have not been easy, but her team is now on track to investigate how neuronal circuits control learning and decision-making — work that may one day help improve the life of people with Parkinson's disease. On a rainy fall morning in 2020, when Sabine Krabbe arrived at the German Center for Neurodegenerative Diseases (DZNE) in Bonn for her official first working day as a new group leader, she felt slightly uneasy — perhaps even a bit scared. Krabbe would have plenty of reasons to be content, though. What is a faraway dream for many early-career researchers had become reality for her: she had landed a tenure-track position at a leading research institute.