Seeing fellow researchers receive awards for their endeavours offers an ideal time to study success and learn valuable lessons about how to guide your scientific career. The two medals given out in the past month by the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), based in Heidelberg, Germany, are no exception.

The organization's 2006 Award for Communication in the Life Sciences went to developmental geneticist Armand Marie Leroi of Imperial College London. Leroi's success had its roots in his desire to spice up his lectures. When he discussed the connection between mutated fruitfly genes and disabilities in humans, his students “sat up and took notice — especially after snoozing through the 50th fly gene”, Leroi says. Inspired, Leroi sought out other connections between genetic mutations and human development, and brought them together in a book called Mutants: On the Form, Varieties and Errors of the Human Body. A television producer saw a copy of the book's manuscript and approached Leroi to make a programme, which was broadcast under the title Human Mutants. Although Leroi says he finds public communication of science “seductive”, he tries to stay “grounded” in his research on the nematode worm Caenorhabditis elegans. “Ultimately communicating science isn't more satisfying than doing science,” he says.

Frank Uhlmann, winner of the 2006 EMBO Gold Medal, attributes much of his success to working in a number of different locations. Now based at Cancer Research UK in London, Uhlmann moved round six labs in Munich while doing his diploma in Germany. He then spent time at the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York and Vienna's Research Institute of Molecular Pathology before heading to Britain. “It's always good to go to different places and see different people's approach to research,” Uhlmann says. “Learn as much as you can as early as you can.”

The career paths of these two winners show how gaining different skills and perspectives can broaden your career. And they also serve as a reminder that success emerges from a passion to do the best science you can.