Tune in weekly to our virtual series “Seventeen Minutes of Science” every Tuesday at 11am PST / 2pm ET where we go live on Facebook with a new guest each week to talk about how science and biotechnology is woven into their lives for (you guessed it) 17 minutes!
On episode 39 of 17 Minutes of Science we are joined by Zoltan Varga, the dirctor of the Zebrafish International Resource Center (ZIRC) located in Eugene at the University of Oregon.
Zoltan Varga was born and raised in Germany. He attended the University of Basel, Switzerland where he completed his undergraduate studies in Biology II in 1990. After graduating, he worked on his thesis “Development and regeneration of the new-born opossum (Monodelphis domestica) in culture” in the lab of professor J.G. Nicholls at the biocenter at the University of Basel until 1992. In 1992, he began his PhD work in the same lab and published his thesis in 1995: “Regeneration of an immature mammalian central nervous system in culture”. Dr. Varga then moved across the world for his post-cod at the University of Oregon, Institute of Neuroscience, in the lab of Professor Monte Westerfeld studying “Brain development and patterning in Zebrafish”. After completing his post-cod in 1999, Dr. Varga became the Junior Research Group Leader at the University Freiburg, Institute Biology 1, in the Department of Professor Wolfgang Driever, Developmental Biology with the research focus of forebrain patterning and development; Development of the Hypothalamic-Pituitary Axis in zebrafish. He worked there until 2004, at which point he became the director of the Zebrafish International Resource Center (ZIRC), Institute of Neuroscience, University of Oregon, Eugene, again with Monte Westerfeld, which is where he currently works today.
Zoltan joins us to talk about how ZIRC was established, and how it has grown to be what it is today. In addition, we will be discussing more about the need for centralized and standardized zebrafish resources. Tune in to learn more!
