Ruedi Aebersold, Professor of Systems Biology, University of Zurich and the ETH

When proteomics pioneer Ruedi Aebersold moves to Zurich this November, it will be both a homecoming to his native Switzerland and a departure — as he leaves the Institute for Systems Biology in Seattle, Washington, although he will retain a research group there (see CV).

But the new position will allow Aebersold to stick to his multidisciplinary roots. As chair of systems biology in a new joint program between the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich and the University of Zurich, he will contribute to a multidisciplinary environment much like the one at the Institute for Systems Biology, where a life scientist can regularly work with an astrophysicist or an information technology specialist. Aebersold wants to nurture an environment that will drive both technology and science forward.

The two have gone hand-in-hand for Aebersold ever since he tried to sequence proteins more or less manually for his thesis project: “a painful, tedious and slow process,” he says. So after his PhD he jumped at the chance to work at Caltech, where Leroy Hood was developing faster and more sensitive ways to address the same problem.

After four years, Aebersold left for a tenure-track post at the University of British Columbia, in Vancouver, Canada, where he continued to improve protein purification while mass spectrometry for protein analysis — which requires very pure proteins — took off. But when Hood moved to the University of Washington, Seattle, Aebersold jumped at the opportunity to be reunited with his mentor. Years later Aebersold had another tough decision — leave the university with Hood to co-found the Institute of Systems Biology, or stay put. “Once you're in a tenured position at a great university it's not so easy to walk away,” Aebersold says.

But the leap proved worthwhile, as it enabled him to work with computational specialists who are fully integrated into the research plans — not a separate support arm. “It's the way many research institutions will have to go,” Aebersold predicts. Working with different groups “shakes up” your thinking and helps create new connections, he says. It also prevents you from getting too enamoured of a particular technique or problem.