Nobel winning scientist joins UU's biomedical research team

Professor Bert Sakmann, the German academic whose ground-breaking work is admired by the world’s neuro-science community, delivered a special lecture at the University of Ulster's (UU) Coleraine campus last night to mark his tenure as Professor of Biomedical Sciences at Ulster. Appointed last year, Professor Sakmann is the second Nobel Prize-winner to accept a part-time professorship at Ulster, joining peace laureate Professor John Hume.

Professor Sakmann is leading a pioneering research project into the nature of nerve cells. The aim is to learn more about how the brain processes information. The project is being conducted by the prestigious Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology in Munich, where he is chiefly based, in conjunction with the Biomedical Sciences Research Institute and other major research centres.

At Ulster, researchers led by Dr Kurt Saetzler, a Lecturer in Computational Biology who is a former doctoral student of Professor Sakmann, have developed software which will be used to analyse research data from the project.

Professor Sakmann’s lecture was entitled: ”Decision-making: anatomy and physiology in the cerebral cortex”. 

The Vice Chancellor, Professor Richard Barnett, told the audience that Professor Sakmann’s acceptance of a professorship at Ulster was a tribute to the expertise and standing of the Biomedical Sciences Research Institute.

Biomedical research at the University of Ulster has been assessed objectively to be Northern Ireland’s leading research group of international standing, having been awarded the highest rating of 5* in each of the two most recent UK-wide research assessment exercises.

Professor Barnett said: “Professor Sakmann was awarded the 1991 Nobel Prize for Physiology, with his research partner Erwin Neher, for their discoveries ‘concerning the function of single ion channels in cells’. 

“The decision by this most distinguished Nobel Prize-winning scientist to join us consolidates our international reputation for excellence in biomedical science.”  Professor Tony Bjourson, Director of the Biomedical Sciences Research Institute, said: “He brings more than 30 years of research at the prestigious Max Planck Institutes for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen and for Medical Research in Heidelberg, where he was Director at the Institute.” 

“Having established his new laboratory at the Max Planck Institute for Neurobiology in Munich, Professor Sakmann is now engaged in research that adds his world-renowned scholarship, and much lustre, to our Institute.  “His expertise in functional and structural neurobiology will contribute a mechanistic understanding of brain functions such as decision-making, sensory systems and bio-imaging.”

Professor Sakmann said that he hopes the software and its 3D imaging facility developed at Ulster will help identify “building blocks” that influence brain mechanisms that enable us to make decisions, to learn and to memorise.

The brain is composed of millions of nerve cells sending electrical and chemical signals between different parts of the brain and the body. Their activity dictates our every action. Because the brain’s processes are so vast, no single scientific research project is likely to unravel its secrets. Using biomedical experimentation on the cortical barrel in the brains of rats - a long-established means of scientific exploration - Professor Sakmann is seeking to identify patterns of nerve cell activity that might be seen broadly also in the human brain. 

Professor Sakmann said that after ten years of research, he is now approaching a new and very significant phase of his investigations. He is in the process of pooling the experimentation research data that he and his researchers have accumulated. His next step will be the use of computer analysis and 3D imaging, which should provide even deeper insights into patterns in human brain activity also.

Professor Sakmann said: “The software that has been developed at the University of Ulster will enable us to try to establish some of the information that we are pursuing.

“I hope it will provide an important piece of the puzzle. Using that software, we plan to establish a computer model of our data. Using the computer model, we hope to be able to validate the data and extend our research focus.”