Ezra Levy awarded Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship
Ezra Levy, postdoc in Andrea Pauli’s lab at the IMP, has been awarded a prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship. The highly competitive fellowship, funded by the European Commission, supports outstanding scientists at research institutions across Europe and fosters excellence in research.
His project investigates how the developmental programs for sperm and eggs are established during early zebrafish development. In many animals, the instructions that define future egg and sperm cells are stored in a specialized structure in the egg known as germplasm, a molecular compartment containing RNAs and proteins. However, how these maternal components are activated over time to guide germline development remains poorly understood.
With funding from the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship, Ezra Levy will study how germplasm changes over time during early development and how its stored genetic information is activated step by step to guide germline formation. Using a combination of molecular profiling and imaging approaches, the work aims to reveal how the embryo controls the timing of germline development. Beyond providing new insights into reproduction and early development, the findings may also help uncover general principles of how cells organise and regulate key biological processes.
Ezra Levy earned his Bachelor’s at Northeastern University in Boston, United States, where he developed single-cell proteomics approaches in the laboratory of Nikolai Slavov. He then completed his PhD in Molecular Biology at Princeton University under the co-mentorship of Eszter Posfai and Stas Shvartsman, where he established live-imaging techniques to study embryonic mouse gonads and discovered new cellular mechanisms that regulate mammalian germline cyst formation. Having grown up in Portugal, Levy made his keen return to Europe and joined Andrea Pauli’s lab at the IMP in September 2025.
The Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowships are among the European Union’s most prestigious research funding schemes, enabling talented researchers to pursue ambitious and innovative projects while strengthening Europe’s scientific landscape.
Further Reading
Lab of Andrea Pauli