Nevan Krogan

What aspect of your research are you most excited about at the moment?
At the present time, it's an incredibly exciting time to be a scientist because so many technologies have matured. However, what is even more exciting is seeing how they're now being merged and integrated to provide an unprecedented view of molecular biology and a deeper mechanistic understanding across different disease areas. With AI coming on board, we're now able to integrate data sets more effectively and make predictions we just couldn’t have made before.

What are the ideal conditions for good research in the Natural Sciences?
In my lab, I’ve tried to set up an atmosphere of freedom – an environment with great scientists where there’s also a lot of flexibility and space for people to come up with their own ideas and execute their own vision. I believe that a free and open setting, where collaboration is encouraged, is ideal for discovery and impact in the natural sciences. 

What insight or idea from your work would you like to see become widespread in society?
A major underpinning of our work is collaboration. The goal is really to bring together people from different disciplines. And I think that idea can extend to all walks of life … bringing together people who don’t usually interact, who don’t necessarily think alike, to solve problems. I believe this kind of logic, which we've applied here in our scientific environment, will have a big impact in virtually any area of society.

Looking to the future, how will your subject area have evolved by 2050?
Right now, we’re deeply involved in data generation and in integrating different data types. We are starting to see that AI, especially structurally focused approaches like AlphaFold, is beginning to shift the focus away from creating experimental data. AI is making research cheaper and faster by accurately predicting experimental outcomes. So I think this will become even more efficient in the future, allowing routine experiments to be predicted by AI, so we can focus our efforts on the more complex and sophisticated type of data collection.

What would you be today if you hadn’t become a researcher?
If I weren’t a scientist, I’d probably be a hockey player. I’m a good Canadian boy. I grew up playing hockey and would probably be a retired player by now. In the scientific world, I’m still considered relatively young in certain circles. But if I were playing hockey, my career would be over. So I’m glad I chose the scientific path.

Who is your scientific hero/heroine?
I admire many scientists from the past, including Marie Curie. She had an extraordinary impact at a time when it was incredibly uncommon for women to be scientists. She was close friends with Albert Einstein, who supported her in her scientific pursuits, and the fact that she won two Nobel Prizes in a short span and laid the foundation for so much of the science we do today is very remarkable.

Is there anything in/about Berlin that you can’t find anywhere else when it comes to your research?
Every place has a unique environment, shaped by the collection of unique scientists that reside there. In Berlin, at Freie Universität, there’s an amazing collection of scientists in the areas of biochemistry, biophysics and structural biology. It’s incredibly stimulating to interact with them, both individually and as a group. I’ll be able to do science there in a way that simply wouldn’t be possible anywhere else in the world.