Maria Leptin Maria Leptin is full Professor at the Institute of Genetics, University of Cologne and Group Leader at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg. In 2010 she was appointed Director of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO). She received her PhD in 1983 and carried her postdoctoral work at the Medical Research Council’s Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) in Cambridge, UK. From 1989-1994 she was Group leader at the Max Planck Institute in Tübingen. The Leptin group studies the mechanisms and forces that determine cell shape in Drosophila and uses zebrafish to analyse innate immune signalling.   How did you first become interested in developmental biology?   It was at the end of my PhD - which was in immunology - when I had to decide what to do for a postdoc. I used to go to seminars at the Basel  Biozentrum , and had heard about germline transformation in Drosophila, from Alan  Spradling , I think, and also about ...