Montenegro ceremoniously joined the European Laboratory for Molecular Biology

Montenegro officially joined the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) today, the Ministry of Science announced.

The delegation of Montenegro, led by the Minister of Science Dr. Sanja Damjanović, is participating in the annual meeting of the Council of EMBL and EMBC in Hamburg. Montenegro's application for full membership in EMBL was presented by Minister Damjanović and Assoc. Dr. Danilo Mrdak from the Faculty of Science and Mathematics, University of Montenegro.

"During the conference, the minister had official meetings with the delegation consisting of: Gerrit van Meer, President of EMBC, Maria Leptin, Director of EMBO, Iain Mattaj, Director General of EMBL, Patrick Cramer, President of the Council of EMBL, Matthias Hentze, Director of EMBL a, Christian Scherf, administrative director of EMBL, Matthias Wilmanns, director of the EMBL Department in Hamburg and Silke Schumacher, director of the International Cooperation Department of EMBL. At the meetings, models of cooperation with Montenegrin researchers and scientists were discussed in order to enable access to large infrastructures and modern technologies that offered by EMBL and EMBO", the Ministry states.

The Montenegrin delegation had the opportunity to visit the German research center DESY (Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron) and the third generation synchrotron accelerator - PETRA III, which are located in Hamburg. Scientific institutions from Germany, France, Italy, Poland, Russia, Spain and other countries around the world are involved in the DESY project. During the conversation, Minister Damjanović introduced the EMBO and EMBL delegation to the Initiative on the establishment of the International Institute for Sustainable Technologies in Southeastern Europe. In this regard, in order to build expertise for the first option of the "synchrotron light source" institute, the help of EMBO and EMBL is welcome, since they deal with this field, and the leaders of these organizations recognized and supported the idea.

The minister emphasized that she was glad that Montenegro joined the EMBO and EMBL organizations because internationalization is a priority of the Ministry of Science, which will increase participation in the EU Horizon 2020 program and affect the reduction of talent outflow. The European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) is one of the world's leading research institutions. The European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO) gathers over 1.700 scientists from Europe.