Cell scientist to watch – Elvan Böke

ABSTRACT Elvan Böke studied molecular biology and genetics at the Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. She then moved to the Cancer Research UK Manchester Institute (CRUK-MI) for a PhD with Iain Hagan, where she discovered that a PP1–PP2A phosphatase relay promotes mitotic exit in fission yeast. For her postdoc, she moved to the lab of Tim Mitchison at Harvard Medical School, Boston, USA, where she unraveled how the enigmatic Balbiani body is formed by an amyloid-like assembly mechanism in oocytes. Elvan established her group at the Centre for Genomic Regulation (CRG) Barcelona, Spain, in 2017, where her lab investigates oocyte biology and cellular dormancy. She was awarded an ERC Starting Grant in 2017 and an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2022. In 2021, Elvan became a member of the EMBO Young Investigator Network.