Martin Hetzer
Since January 2023 he has been President of the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) and Professor of Molecular and Cell Biology with a research group at ISTA. He also holds a Jesse and Caryl Philips Professorship. Prior to joining ISTA, he served as Senior Vice President and Chief Science Officer at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla. Hetzer received his PhD in biochemistry and genetics from the University of Vienna, and completed his postdoctoral work at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, before joining the faculty at the Salk as an Assistant Professor in 2004 and becoming Full Professor in 2011. His research focuses on fundamental aspects of organismal aging with a special focus on the heart and central nervous system. His laboratory has made important contributions in the area of cancer research and cell differentiation. He was awarded with numerous awards including a Pew Scholar Award, an Early Life Scientist Award from the American Society of Cell Biology, a Senior Scholar Award for Aging from the Ellison Medical Foundation, a Senior Scholar Award from the American Cancer Society, a Royal Society Research Merit Award, the Glenn Award for Research in Biological Mechanisms of Aging, and most recently the NIH Director’s Transformative Research Award.
