29/08/2016
Print PageDKTK Frankfurt/Mainz: Simone Fulda joins DFG’s Senate Commission
The DFG Senate has appointed DKTK scientist Professor Simone Fulda, Director of the Institute for Experimental Cancer Research in Paediatrics at University Hospital Frankfurt, to serve on the Permanent Senate Commission on Key Questions in Clinical Research (SCCR) for the next three years. The SCCR was set up in July 2013 for an initial period of three years. In July this year its mandate was extended for a further three years.
The role of the SCCR
A key task of the SCCR is to advise politicians and official bodies, as well as scientists and the general public, on behalf of the DFG. Among other things, the SCCR deals with issues relating to medical research that are of relevance to political decision-makers on a national and international level, so that they can form an opinion and decide where they stand. When an issue relating to clinical research needs to be governed by law, the Senate Commission helps develop and formulate legislative solutions.
Simone Fulda stands for new approaches in cancer research
Professor Fulda has made a name for herself with her apoptosis research. Apoptosis is a process of programmed cell death, which is necessary for maintaining tissue homoeostasis, but which is typically disrupted in cancer cells. Professor Fulda is researching new medicinal treatments to restart this ‘suicide programme’ in cancer cells, so that new options for personalised cancer treatment can be developed. She has received numerous national and international prizes for her contributions to research. Simone Fulda was born in 1968 and studied medicine in Cologne, Boston, San Francisco, Phoenix and Dublin, supported by scholarships from the German National Merit Foundation and the German Academic Exchange Service. She graduated and received her doctorate in 1995, and in 2001 she qualified as a consultant, as well as receiving her postdoctoral habilitation. From 2002 to 2007 she was a recipient of a Heisenberg Fellowship grant from the DFG, and from 2007 to 2010 she worked as a DFG research professor at the University of Ulm. Since mid-2010, she has been Director of the Institute for Experimental Cancer Research in Paediatrics at University Hospital Frankfurt. Simone Fulda has been involved in the DKTK since the consortium was founded in 2012: as deputy spokesperson for its Frankfurt/Mainz site and as coordinator of the research programme on molecular mechanisms of cancer development.
In 2015, she was appointed by German Federal President Joachim Gauck to the German Council of Science and Humanities (Wissenschaftsrat), for a second term of office. Here she helps advise the German federal and state governments on issues relating to the content and structure of higher education, science and research.