What comes to mind when Leila Akkari shares some of the achievements she is proudest of are all the contributions that her team members bring to the lab every day. “I find them truly inspiring,” she explains. “It so often happens that they are immediately able to perceive something that I have not been able to see. I love the energy they bring to the lab and how our interactions are complementary, even synergistic. I believe that we, as group leaders, are nothing without the people we work with.”
The EMBO Young Investigator Programme offered Akkar the tools to become a group leader she felt were lacking in her career. She completed her PhD in health sciences in the laboratory of Ula Hibner at the Institute of Molecular Genetics of Montpellier, France, during which she studied the effects of Hepatitis C virus proteins on cancer initiation. She then adjusted her research focus on rare tumours and joined Johanna Joyce’s laboratory at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York City. Yet, she did not feel fully prepared to be a group leader when she joined the Netherlands Cancer Institute in Amsterdam in 2017.
“Being a group leader is a completely new experience. I transitioned from being a researcher to being both a scientist and a manager. I was eager to join the EMBO Young Investigator Programme to learn more from people and to understand how to run a lab. It has been a life-changing experience to be able to connect with other researchers going through the process of becoming group leaders and successfully advancing science.”
Akkari deplores being on the last year of her participation in the young investigator programme. “I have grown a lot, and so has my lab, thanks to EMBO,” she acknowledges. “I will miss the opportunity to connect on a regular basis with all the other programme participants. Yet, I’m also looking forward to giving back to the future cohorts of EMBO Young Investigators.”
