Jelena Erceg (Croatia)
| My name is Jelena and I am doing my PhD in molecular biology at EMBL in Heidelberg. |  |
Since my childhood I have been fascinated with nature and logics that stand behind it, but also with foreign languages and the way they were made to transfer information to people, their rules and richness of expression. I decided to go to a language high school, but it was at this very high school where I first heard about a new and thrilling way in which one could explore the living world and the complexity of information it contains. This new way was molecular biology, which eventually changed my life.
I started to study molecular biology at the University of Zagreb in Croatia and discovered that the field of the developmental biology attracts me the most. Behind every development there was a new language, language of life and its grammar. But how does it work to produce life – including us? How does an organism develop from a single cell? What controls this development? What are similarities and differences among different species? During my studies I got the opportunity to spend three months in Bergen in Norway where I was working experimentally to address some of these questions. This endeavour later moulded my career interest and paved the way for me to pursue scientific career.
I later got selected to do a PhD at the EMBL International PhD Programme at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg. The environment at EMBL further strengthened my resolve to unravel the logics behind the development, for which I opted out medaka, a fish, as a model organism. It is a tropical fish from Asia, with adults just a few centimetres long. The eggs of medaka are transparent and one can follow the development and even see how the heart beats under microscope. Medaka helps me to untangle some of the interesting questions in the regulation of the cardiac development.
Apart from my research project, I also have an opportunity to attend interesting lectures from speakers all around the world and discuss different topics in science. As a scientist you have a chance to travel a lot to conferences or change the place where you want to work every few years. I got to know many people from various countries and with different cultures. Except from enjoying travelling, I also like cycling, swimming in the sea in summer, reading books and listening to music.
To be a scientist is very adventurous and challenging, but also rewarding. It is so exciting to see something new, that nobody else has seen before. It opens new questions and pushes you forward into new challenges – into the unknown.