Just came back from a great meeting in Tutzing on the biology of basal Metazoa. Excellent talks, fantastic posters and very kind and vital community. Thanks also to our keynote speaker, Cassandra Extavour. She was the highlight of the meeting. Thanks everyone for contributing.

Finally, Andi Denner finished his PhD. Congratulations for a a long and successful thesis work.

We knew that cnidarians have stunning regenerative capacities. But the molecular and cellular mechanisms underlying the self-organization of gastruloids of Nematostella surprised us. A story of cell sorting and Notch signaling. Please check out the work of Sanjay's PhD work: doi.org/10.1101/2025...

Finally, the excellent postdoc work of Emmanuel Haillot is out, where he dissected the integration of Wnt, MAPK and Notch signaling in defining mesoderm and endoderm identities in the diploblast Nematostella. Strikingly similar to sea urchins. www.nature.com/articles/s41...

Great opportunity! The Uni Vienna has launched a call (APART) for 4-funding for outstanding postdocs from a US institution. The host lab has to nominate by 1 August a candidate for further selection. Anyone interested in our work please contact me by email with CV/motivation letter. Hurry up!

Had a great day at Columbia University with Oliver Hobert and his colleagues. It feels special to see the original Fly room of Thomas Hunt Morgan! So much great work has been done here and now the Trump administration cut them by 400 Mio Dollars. Insane.

Beautiful morning! Awaiting the second day of the symposium on the Enteric nervous system at Janelia Farm.

Congratulations to my friend and colleague Oleg Simakov. In a competitive internal call he just was promoted to Full Professor! Keep sailing, Oleg!

I am grateful to be invited at the Academia Sinica in Taipeh. Impressive institute with lots of interesting research and facilities. Special thanks to my hosts Kostya Kalthurin and Stephan Schneider.