Gáspár Jékely
Gáspár Jékely is a group leader at the Centre for Organismal Studies (COS) in Heidelberg. He is a prominent researcher in neurobiology and evolutionary biology, renowned for his work on the evolution and function of nervous systems. Gáspár earned his Ph.D. from Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, Hungary. Later on he conducted his postdoctoral research at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg. After founding his lab at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Tübingen his career has been marked by a dedicated focus on understanding the origins and complexity of neural circuits, particularly through the study of the marine invertebrate Platynereis dumerilii. Furthermore, he is a strong advocate for open science, supporting open access publishing, preprint servers, and transparent peer review processes to enhance the accessibility of scientific knowledge. He also emphasizes the importance of data sharing and reproducibility, encouraging scientists to make their data and methodologies openly available for the benefit of the entire scientific community. In addition to his research, Gáspár wrote a book called "The Story of Genetics, Development and Evolution: A Historical Dialogue" which offers a compelling historical narrative of the development of key concepts in genetics, developmental biology, and evolutionary biology.
