Van Deenen lecture 2021

Carsten Schultz is an internationally recognized expert in the field of chemical biology and lipid cell biology. Carsten Schultz’ most recognizable work relates to the numerous lipid sensing and manipulating tools that were developed in his laboratory.  His core expertise are techniques to make charged molecules including lipid phosphates pass cell membranes in a non-invasive manner as well as to release specific lipids in intact cells with high temporal precision using photoactivation. These approaches are now combined with modifications that permit photo-crosslinking and click chemistry.  Together, these techniques and reagents opened the door for experiments that follow lipid metabolism and signaling with a minimal number of experimental artifacts.  A main research interest of the Schultz laboratory in recent years is the dissection of the signal transduction network in β-cells, where many of the developed molecular tools were successfully applied. In addition, Dr. Schultz provided these lipid probes to a large number of scientists and, through many fruitful collaborations, the Schultz group developed a portfolio of contributions in the fields of neuroscience as well as virology. The unique combination of broad understanding of cellular biology and detailed technical expertise has helped Carsten Schultz to export chemical biology into modern physiology and biology research areas.

Dr. Schultz is strongly engaged in promoting Chemical Biology. Since 2008, he is co-organizing the largest conference series on the topic, which now runs in uneven years as “Chemical Biology & Physiology”. Since 2015, he serves as an associate editor for “Chemical Science”, the flagship journal of the Royal Chemical Society, UK. For his innovative work, Dr. Schultz received the Heidelberg Molecular Life Science Award 2012 and the Metropolregion RN Innovation Prize 2013.  

 

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