Munich

Europe's flagship molecular biology lab has chosen an insider — Iain Mattaj — to be its fourth director.

Mattaj, a Scot, will succeed Greek biologist Fotis Kafatos as director general of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) based in Heidelberg, Germany, next May. European biologists welcomed the institute's appointment of one of its own researchers as confirmation that the 30-year-old laboratory has found its feet.

“It's a terrific choice,” says Michael Ashburner, a geneticist at the University of Cambridge, and former co-director of the European Bioinformatics Institute (EBI) near Cambridge, UK, one of EMBL's four outstations. “It's a tough job, but Mattaj has the skills and credibility it will take.”

Mattaj, a biochemist, is one of the most-cited biologists in his field. He joined EMBL as a group leader 19 years ago and later led the lab's gene-expression programme, becoming its scientific director in 1999. Colleagues describe him as straightforward, humorous and warm, and many say that he is an ideal director for EMBL.

Mattaj says that his priority will be to accelerate a shift in the lab's focus from the molecular biology of individual genes and proteins to systems biology. “Simulation and computer models are penetrating molecular biology with might,” he says. “But there's still much good experimental biology that doesn't use computational methods: this tension must be overcome in the next few years.”

EMBL is funded by 17 member states, including most of the western European Union, Switzerland and Israel. Its 100 groups, with about 900 scientists, PhD students and technical staff, work across the spectrum of molecular biology. Besides its headquarters in Heidelberg and the EBI, EMBL operates X-ray facilities for molecular structural biology in Grenoble, France, and Hamburg, Germany, and a mouse-biology programme in Monterotondo near Rome.

The EMBL council last week agreed to postpone by one year the start of the lab's next five-year science programme to give Mattaj time to prepare the right strategy.

He says that he will try to raise extra money for renovation and expansion: the Heidelberg labs need refurbishment, for example. But Mattaj is keen to continue his own cell-biology work. “I sincerely hope I'll still be able to spend some time in the lab,” he says. “Otherwise, it is very easy to forget how difficult it is, and how many disappointments are lurking at the bench.”