Amparo Acker-Palmer facts for kids

Amparo Acker-Palmer (born 10 September 1968) is a Spanish scientist who works in Germany. She is a cell biologist and neuroscientist. This means she studies tiny cells and how the brain and nervous system work.

Her research looks at how nerves and blood vessels grow and develop. She tries to find out if they use similar methods. Amparo Acker-Palmer has also worked with her husband, Till Acker, who studies the brain, on ways to treat diseases like cancer. She has won many awards, including the Paul Ehrlich & Ludwig Darmstaeder Prize for Young Researchers in 2010. In 2012, she became a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

Education and Her Journey

Amparo Acker-Palmer grew up in Sueca, Valencia, Spain. She studied biology and biochemistry at the University of Valencia, finishing in 1991.

She earned her PhD in biology from the University of Valencia in 1996. After that, she moved to Heidelberg, Germany. There, she did more research at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) until 1999.

In 2001, she became a junior group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology in Martinsried. She worked there for six years. In 2007, she became a Professor at Goethe University in a special research group called "Macromolecular Complexes."

In 2011, she became the head of the Department of Molecular and Cellular Neurobiology at Goethe University. She also worked on a special program called the Focus Program Translational Neurosciences (FTN). In 2014, she was chosen as a Max Planck Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research. Here, she continued to study how nerves and blood vessels communicate.

What She Researches

Amparo Acker-Palmer's main work focuses on how nerves and blood vessels develop at a very tiny, molecular level. She and her team published their findings in the science journal Nature in 2010. Their paper was about how a molecule called EphrinB2 helps control how blood vessels grow.

She won the Paul Ehrlich & Ludwig Darmstaeder Prize for Young Researchers for finding out that nerves and blood vessels develop in similar ways.

One of the molecules she studies is called Ephrin. This molecule helps guide nerve fibers as the central nervous system develops. Her research looks at a specific part of Ephrin, called Ephrin-B2. She studies how Ephrin-B2 helps blood vessels grow. Her team has done more experiments to confirm their important findings.

Awards and Recognitions

Amparo Acker-Palmer has received many honors and awards for her scientific work:

• She received a special scholarship from the Spanish Government (1992–1996).
• She won an Extraordinary Award from the University of Valencia, Spain (1997).
• She was chosen as an EU Fellow for a research program (1997–1999).
• She won €60,000 from the Paul Ehrlich & Ludwig Darmstaeder Prize for Young Researchers in 2010. This was for her discovery about how nerves and blood vessels develop similarly.
• She received the Gutenberg Research Fellowship Award (2012).
• She was chosen as a Max Planck Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Brain Research (2014).
• She received a €2.5 million award from the European Research Council (ERC) in 2015.

See also

In Spanish: Amparo Acker-Palmer para niños

• List of Spanish inventors and discoverers