Gregor Mendel Institute
The Gregor Mendel Institute of Molecular Plant Biology (GMI) was founded by the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 2000 to promote research excellence in the area of molecular plant biology. It is one of the few institutes worldwide that focuses on basic research using plants. Research at the GMI is curiosity driven and covers many aspects of molecular genetics, including basic mechanisms of epigenetics, population genetics, chromosome biology, developmental biology, stress signal transduction and plant pathogens. Arabidopsis thaliana is the primary model organism used although other organisms are also studied. The GMI is located in the Vienna Biocenter Campus within the purpose-built Austrian Academy of Sciences Life Sciences Center. The institute is named after Gregor Mendel, the ‘father of genetics’, who studied at the University of Vienna in the middle of the 19th century.
History
The making of an institute
The Gregor Mendel Institute was founded on the initiative of the Presidency of the Austrian Academy of Sciences and Dr Dieter Schweizer. The location was planned for the Vienna Biocenter, with a focus on basic research in molecular plant biology, as complement to the research of the neighboring campus institutes (Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) and the biomedical Institute of Molecular Biotechnology (IMBA), also of the Austrian Academy of Sciences). Establishing an institute in molecular plant biology in an environment where public opinion was against plant research due to the negative influence of the ongoing GM-food debate was an uphill task. However, following the recommendation of an ad-hoc International Scientific Advisory Committee set up by the Austrian Academy of Sciences, it became official: The new institute was to be a plant research centre, the first of its kind in Austria.
After his appointment as founding director in November 2000, Dr Schweizer met Boris Podrecca, a well-known Viennese architect, who had just won a competition announced by the Austrian Academy of Sciences for the new IMBA building. The City of Vienna generously provided additional building ground for the GMI, allowing an extension of the Podrecca concept to house both GMI and IMBA. It was decided that the GMI with its glasshouses and plant growth facilities should be located above IMBA rather than as an adjacent unit.
In 2003, the GMI employed its first researchers, the first group leader a young Czech cell biologist, Karel Riha. In 2004, the GMI welcomed two new research groups: Dr Marjori Matzke and Dr Antonius Matzke (Academy Institute of Molecular Biology, Salzburg, Austria), who were temporarily housed at the Pharmacy Center of the University of Vienna; and Dr Ortrun Mittelsten Scheid (Friedrich Miescher Institute, Basel, Switzerland), whose group was temporarily hosted by the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences (BOKU Wien). In 2005 and 2006 four additional research groups were established. At the end of 2005 the Austrian Academy of Sciences Life Sciences Center was completed, and in 2006 the six GMI research groups moved from their five temporary locations in Vienna to the new premises.
Dieter Schwiezer retired as Director in 2007, and Dr Ortrun Mittelsten Scheid was appointed Interim Director during the search for a new Director. In January 2009, Dr Magnus Nordborg, an internationally-renowned population and quantitative geneticist, was appointed the new Director. At that time Nordborg was an Associate Professor at the University of Southern Californina in Los Angeles.