He is spurred on by the uncontrollable. Not knowing exactly what happens was his motivation behind switching to biology after completing his degree in physics, even though he originally wanted to go into film and was a keen actor during his high school years.

The main protagonists Rafael Edgardo Carazo Salas deals with today are minute. The biochemist from ETH Zurich researches cellular growth – and so successfully that he was recently awarded one of the most coveted prizes for young scientists: the “ERC Independent Researchers Starting Grant” established by the European Research Council to support internationally outstanding projects conducted by young, promising scientists. Carazo Salas received 1.7 million euros for his project “Systems Study of Cellular Growth, Shape and Polarity”.

Artistic freedom

Yes, a handsome amount of money, states the prize-winning researcher. It practically guarantees him the “artistic and creative freedom” for the next five years to continue his research work in the field and expand his team. Basically, the aim is to understand how genes and proteins influence the shape, size and polarity of cells – an enormously complicated process that can be studied the most easily in simple model organisms like yeast cells.

“First of all,” says Carazo Salas, “we have to find the components that are involved in the growth process. Then we can find out how they are interconnected and, ultimately, how this network of regulators activates and controls the growth process.”

Systems biological approach

He had the idea of developing a more mathematical, systematic approach to the life sciences during his physics degree – quite a novel concept at the beginning of the 1990s. “Back then, guys like me were mavericks”. Nowadays, however, there are excellent opportunities for like-minded people – under the Swiss initiative for systems biology “SystemsX”, for instance, which ETH Zurich is also involved in.

Admittedly, his work is still pure basic research. However, the results it has yielded could one day help us to understand cancer better, for example. After all, cellular changes play a role in many diseases. “The better we understand the details of the growth process, the sooner we can recognize and correct possible defects.”

Science globetrotter

Rafael Edgardo Carazo Salas is one of those young researchers who have already been around a bit during their lives: born in Costa Rica, studied in Montreal, PhD in Paris and Heidelberg, sojourns in Cambridge, London, New York – and Zurich. The 38-year-old joined ETH Zurich two years ago. “I fell in love with the institute here immediately”. He means the Institute of Biochemistry, where Carazo Salas headed a small interdisciplinary research team. Headed. For the next port of call on his career map already awaits him: Cambridge. For love: his long-standing partner and he cannot bear to be apart any longer.

Of course, assures Rafael Edgardo Carazo Salas, he would have loved to have continued his project at ETH Zurich – especially as he would even have been made assistant professor here. However, thankfully there is more to life than your career.