Five years ago, Giulio Superti-Furga jumped from the tranquillity of academia into the high-risk, rough-and-tumble world of biotechnology. After an exciting but exhausting ride, he has recently returned to academia and is now combining the best of both worlds in his new lab in Vienna.

A molecular biologist, Superti-Furga got his first taste of industrial research as a PhD student, spending a year at Genentech in California. He went on to do a postdoc at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Germany, where he stayed for the next 14 years studying the proteins involved in cell signalling.

Near the end of the 1990s, Superti-Furga began thinking about launching his own company, but wasn't sure where to begin. Then he met some biotech entrepreneurs, who had come to EMBL scouting for ideas and people for their next start-up. This turned out to be one of the most important meetings of his life. “It was like playing guitar in your backyard and then the stretched limo arrives and The Rolling Stones step out and ask you to play with them,” he says.

He co-founded Cellzome, a proteomics company that would both collaborate with drug firms to find better biological targets and develop its own drugs. Superti-Furga worked one day a week at EMBL while serving as scientific director and later as vice-president at Cellzome.

Suddenly, Superti-Furga found himself tackling a variety of new tasks, such as pitching his technology to dozens of investment bankers and venture capitalists. He found this audience far tougher than the most sceptical scientists. “In business, if they think you're a fool, they tell you straightaway,” he says.

By 2004, Cellzome was better established and Superti-Furga was ready to move on. So when he got the chance to head up the new Center for Molecular Medicine at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, he didn't think twice. Admittedly, he had promised his Viennese wife that he would apply for jobs in her home town, but he also saw an opportunity to build another new organization.

Now he is using lessons learned at Cellzome: half of his lab consists of scientists from industry. He is hoping to combine the free-wheeling idea generation of academia with the efficient and professional execution of ideas characteristic of the biotech industry. Throwing together people from different backgrounds is consistent with his advice to young scientists: “Try to associate with people who are smarter than you.”