Melina Schuh is Director of the Department of Meiosis at the Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences in Göttingen, Germany, where she has served as Managing Director since 2025. She studied biochemistry at the University of Bayreuth and obtained her PhD from Heidelberg University and EMBL. In 2009, she established her independent research group at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge. She was appointed as a Max Planck Director in 2016.
Her research focuses on mammalian oocyte development and the effects of maternal ageing. Her laboratory has pioneered high-resolution imaging approaches in human oocytes, providing fundamental insights into spindle organization, chromosome architecture, and the origins of segregation errors.
She is a member of EMBO and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. Her work has been recognized with numerous awards, including the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize, the EMBO Gold Medal, the 2025 Falling Walls Science Breakthrough of the Year Award, and the 2026 Carus Medal.
Professional position
- Director, Department of Meiosis, Max Planck Institute for Multidisciplinary Sciences, Max Planck Society
