Birgit Liss is a full professor at Ulm University, where she has been the Director of the Institute of Applied Physiology since 2010. She is also a visiting professor at New College and Linacre College, at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. 

She graduated in Biochemistry, Molecular Biology, and Neuroscience at the University of Hamburg in Germany, where she earned her Ph.D. at the Centre for Molecular Neurobiology (ZMNH). After her postdoctoral training and starting her independent research as a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow at the University of Oxford, she returned to Germany and became one of the first tenure-track junior professors in the country, at the University of Marburg. She joined the University of Ulm as a full professor for Physiology in 2007. 

Birgit Liss and her team analyze the electrophysiological functions and gene expression patterns of individual brain cells, to understand their specific functional roles in health and disease states. They focus on neurons in the midbrain that release the transmitter dopamine. Their activity is essential for motor control, but also for our emotions, motivation, and cognitive functions. While the progressive loss of a subpopulation of these neurons leads to the typical motor symptoms ofParkinson’s disease, neighbouring subtypes are particularly affected in Schizophrenia or attention deficit disorders. Birgit’s research aims to better understand the complex (patho-) physiological functions of dopamine neurons, particularly those related to their specific fates in diseases, to provide a foundation for the development of novel therapeutic strategies. 

She is a principal investigator in the German Collaborative Research Center 1506 “Aging at Interfaces”. Her goal within this interdisciplinary network is to uncover new resilience mechanisms that can protect neurons from age-dependent degeneration in Parkinson’s disease and beyond. Among other awards, she received the Alfried Krupp Price for Young University Professors in 2007. Her research is funded by grants from the German Foundation for Scientific Research (DFG), the Wellcome Trust (UK), and the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), among others.

Keywords: Physiology, Neuroscience, dopamine, ion channels & receptors, neurodegeneration, aging, Parkinson’s disease.

Ulm – September 27th, 2023

How did you (decide to) become a scientist?

I’ve never really decided to become a scientist. It just happened. I didn’t plan it. It was simply the most important thing I ever wanted to do in my life: learn how the body works, especially the brain. I think it’s a good thing that I never planned a career in science, nor did I know what it meant, because maybe otherwise I might not have done it.

What is your drive and excitement in science and in doing what you do now?

Understanding how the brain works, this is still my drive. From my view, the brain is the most complex organ in the body. For instance, if you look at the heart, one heart-muscle cell is like the other, each cell needs to do the same, in order to allow a proper heartbeat. In contrast, in the brain, each cell is a whole universe, each neuron is kind of unique, and this allows proper brain function. Although we learn more and more about how nerve cells and neuronal networks work, we still don’t fully understand how the brain mediates all these complex functions, like e.g. playing the piano or riding a bike. It requires hard work and training to learn it, but at some point, you simply “can do it” without further thinking. Besides my research, teaching is a big part of my job. I teach Physiology and Neuroscience, and I like it a lot. Because you get an instantaneous reward, when you see that you “got” the students (or some of them), that you managed to transfer some of your enthusiasm and excitement about the body and the brain. In life sciences research, in contrast, it takes years to complete a project from having an idea and writing a grant, to publishing the results. Teaching, instead, has this same-day reward. You can tell immediately whether your lecture was good or not.

Would you have one word to give as a gift to other women and more in general to young aspiring scientists, women or men?

The word of encouragement would be: “Be resilient”, in general, and particularly as a female scientist. And if I am allowed another few words: “Follow your passion, no matter what”.