Lots of white coats are hanging from pegs on the back of doors throughout the department of neuropsychiatry and behavioural neurogenetics at the Weizmann Institute, yet hardly anyone is ever seen wearing one. Perhaps this contributes to the informal atmosphere which Germans like to describe as “typically Israeli”. The renowned research institute in Rehovot is no exception. Since March 2014, Israeli and German researchers have been working together at the Max Planck – Weizmann Laboratory for Experimental Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Neurogenetics. They are exploring a core problem of the modern age: the causes of cognitive, emotional and neurological diseases.
The laboratory’s director, Professor Alon Chen, is also able to describe the research objective in simple terms: discovering how the brain deals with stress. The answers to this question are highly complex, he explains, because they differ from one person to the next. For example, of ten soldiers who experienced the same trauma in a war situation – namely seeing their friends die alongside them – only 15% developed post-traumatic stress disorder. It is still unclear even today why such experiences cause some people to fall to pieces while others are able to survive them unscathed. “We are keen to find out how the stress system that is activated in such situations can be deactivated again. If this could be achieved, it would pave the way for the treatment of depression, anxiety and fear. We are already halfway there, but so far we have only been able to partially apply many of our findings.”
Alon Chen is at his desk in his small office – he is not wearing a white coat either. A framed poster with a German slogan hangs on the wall: “Der Mensch als Industriepalast” (The Human Being as Industrial Palace). It compares organic functions of the body with industrial processes. Chen is actually an expert in mouse genetics, though his remit is almost solely that of a manager – in a dual role. He has two business cards, identifying him as a professor of neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute and as director of the Department of Stress, Neurobiology and Neurogenetics at the Max Planck Institute in Munich. It is in these roles that he also runs the Israeli-German laboratory. Roughly 30 researchers work there in all with projects taking place partly in Israel and partly in Germany. Because the collaboration does not require any transatlantic flights, emphasises Chen, this lively exchange offers considerable mutual benefits for everyone involved.
Both sides largely agree on the benefits: for the Israelis, the Max Planck Institute with its associated clinic is an important partner because it allows research to be conducted with more resources and, above all, with access to “human samples”. In turn, the Germans profit from a research approach characterised by considerably less bureaucracy and a greater willingness to take risks. They may be clichés, but they are mentioned time and time again: the solid German approach with its long-term planning is an excellent complement to the less hierarchical and more flexible structures in Israel. Documentation and records are done very well in Germany, says Chen, while in his young country people have less patience and time for that sort of thing.
Ethical standards are similar in Germany and Israel, although the speed at which necessary permits are granted is not. “Things that take six months in Germany are achieved in perhaps three weeks in Israel. We are less complicated and less bureaucratic in those areas.” In turn, the Germans are extremely reliable as far as deadlines are concerned. “If they tell me that the new cafeteria will be finished at 2 pm on 2 February, I’ll be able to enjoy the first coffee there at exactly that time.” Alon Chen tried to shake up rigid and entrenched structures in Munich. Getting people to call him by his first name – the done thing in Israel – rather than addressing him as Herr Professor is just as much part of such attempts as setting up the aforementioned cafeteria: “Now there is a place where it is easy for people to get together informally; in the past people often did not even know each other’s names.”
The son of Moroccan immigrants, 44-year-old Chen grew up in the Israeli desert city of Beersheba. He was a parachutist in the army and also spent time studying in the USA. Germany’s past plays no part in his everyday life, he says, though he does not simply brush it aside. He wants to ensure that a book about the multifaceted history of the Max Planck Institute that is currently available only in German is also published in English.
In a small room not far from Chen’s office, 34-year-old Matthias Prigge from the German state of Saxony-Anhalt is busy with his research, using a microscope to measure cross-sections of mouse brains. Previously, a female laboratory mouse had been placed with baby mice that she cared for as if they were her own. It is now a question of finding out how this behaviour influences the wiring of the brain. Prigge has been a postdoctoral researcher in Rehovot for two and a half years. He gained his PhD at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and met his current boss Ofer Izhar, 39, in Stanford. The latter’s previous superior had in turn been a postdoctoral researcher himself at the Max Planck Institute. Izhar explains that he pretty much grew up with this kind of collaboration so it comes quite naturally to him.
The President of the Weizmann Institute, Professor Daniel Zajfman, describes this gradual development over the years as “bottom up”. As early as 1959, his institute invited a German delegation from the Max Planck Society to Israel. This exchange later led to the foundation of the Minerva Stiftung, from which Prigge holds a scholarship. He was also in Rehovot when missiles rained down on Israel in the summer of 2014. He never imagined that he would one day be doing research here and regularly have to dash off to a bunker 200 metres away.
The German researcher also talks about the Israelis’ flat hierarchies and straightforward approach. Students in Israel are less afraid of asking questions when they do not understand something in a seminar. “I know there’s no such thing as a stupid question, but many people are more self-conscious about asking something in Germany”. He goes on to say that ideas are also generated more easily in a less constricted atmosphere. In other words, these are ideal conditions for good research results.