As part of the EMBL model for research infrastructure used by NCMM, all research groups must undergo an evaluation within five years of their establishment at the center to decide if a four-year renewal should be granted.
The chemical neuroscience group's evaluation was in part based on letters of recommendation from scientific experts within the field.
In addition, group leader Dr Camila Esguerra met with NCMM's Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) during their visit to Oslo last month. Here, Dr Esguerra delivered a presentation on the group's progress so far and plans for the future, after which she was interviewed by the SAB panel members.
Following this meeting, the SAB recommended to the NCMM board that Dr Esguerra's group should be renewed beginning December 1 st 2019.
Discussing the extension, Dr Esguerra said:
"I am very happy and thankful to the SAB and NCMM Board for supporting the renewal of my research group! I am also grateful to my team for all the hard work, and to everyone at NCMM for being so supportive and helpful these past 5 years. My team and I are very excited and highly motivated to carry out the next phase of our research, which will utilize our established zebrafish models to delve deeper into our understanding of disease mechanisms and finally start hunting for new drugs!"
You can read more about Dr Esguerra and her research using zebrafish as a model to study brain function in health and disease on the NCMM researcher profile page.