The 72nd Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting was devoted to physiology and medicine and took place from the 25th to the 30th of June, 2023. 38 Nobel laureates attended and took active part at this special event. They met with more than 600 up and coming next-generation scientists from all over the world. EKFS regularly nominates outstanding scientists who receive funding from the foundation for participation at the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings. This year invitations to the meeting were extended to Prof. Dr. Dr. Christine Engeland, EKFS First-Time Applicant (2015) and Else Kröner Memorial Fellowship recipient (2019), and Dr. Julien H. Park, Memorial Fellowship recipient (2022).

In 2020 Prof. Dr. Dr. Christine Engeland took on the capacity as Professor for Experimental Virology on the faculty for Virology and Microbiology at Witten/Herdecke University in Germany. Together with her team she studies virus-host interactions and, on the basis of these findings, researches new therapeutical approaches – one focal point thereof is cancer immunotherapy. At a dinner held during the Nobel Laureate Meeting Christine Engeland had the opportunity to discuss her research on oncolytic viruses with Charles Rice. “What impressed me the most were the Nobel laureates who actively commit themselves to socially relevant issues and humanitarian causes alongside their top-level research, for example Sir Richard Roberts, Peter Agre and Elizabeth Blackburn,” the scientist reports.

Dr. Julien H. Park performs research on congenital disorders of glycosylation (CDG) at Münster University Hospital (UKM) in Germany. They are hereditary metabolic disorders that lead to severe, potentially fatal multisystem diseases. “While talking to a colleague from Barcelona during the Nobel Laureate Meeting she enabled me to find a solution to a problem that has preoccupied me for a long time – to me, solid proof of just how valuable the exchange at this unique meeting can be,” reports the Memorial Fellowship recipient. “Really especially inspiring was the conversation with William G. Kaelin, Jr., a laureate whose seminal findings accompanied him all the way to clinical application, even when he was still a clinician scientist. His thoughts on the interaction of basic science and clinical medicine were enormously motivating for me,” according to the scientist.