SCILLS - The Scottish Institute for Cell Signalling

Ivan Dikic has accepted an invitation to be the Chairman of the Scientific Advisory Group of SCILLS.  Born and brought up in Croatia, where he was trained as a medical doctor, he obtained his PhD in molecular biology from the University of Zagreb while working under the supervision of Joseph Schlessinger at New York University Medical Center, USA.  He became a Group Leader at the Ludwig Institute for Cancer Research, Uppsala, Sweden moving to Frankfurt in 2002. He is currently a Professor of Biochemistry at the Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany and at the start of 2009 became the Founder Director of the CEF (Center of Excellence Frankfurt) Institute. 

He also holds an Honorary Professorship at the University of Split, Croatia, where he is an Adjunct Investigator of the Tumour Biology Program of medILS.

Ivan is widely recognized as one of the leading scientists working on the ubiquitin system today.  His research has pioneered the concept that ubiquitin acts a classical signaling messenger, being recognized by specific ubiquitin-binding domains (UBD) that are present in cellular proteins, and which relay ubiquitin signals into appropriate cellular responses. His work has explained how specific ubiquitin-binding domains regulate a variety of processes, including immunological responses, DNA repair, 
proteasomal degradation and receptor-mediated endocytosis. One of his current interests is to understand the role of selective autophagy receptors that bind to ubiquitin- like modifiers, such as LC3/Atg8, and act as molecular regulators of autophagy.

Ivan’s recent awards include the Wissenschaftspreis 2006 from the Glaxo-Smith-Kline-Foundation, the Binder Innovation Prize of the German Society for Cell Biology (2006) and the American Association for Cancer Research Award for Outstanding Achievement in Cancer Research in 2006.