Rościsław’s (Rostek’s) defence took place on 17th November 2021. Before joining the Max Planck research group, Rostek accomplished the initial stages of his education at the Jagiellonian University (2011-2016) where he worked on heme oxygenase at the Department of Medical Biotechnology. At this early stage of his career, he already participated in international exchange and went to Milano (Italy) for an internship and actively participated at the local scientific students’ association “Mygen”.
The defence started with a short introduction of a Ph.D. student by Dr. Sebastian Glatt. He met Rostek 5 years ago and hired him on the spot after an enthusiastic and exuberant scientific discussion on the project. It was his pleasure that Rostek joined the lab very early and conducted his experimental part of the Ph.D. in his team. Dr. Glatt highlighted that Rostek was extremely productive, as he has published a total of nine papers by the moment of his defence, including manuscripts that make up the body of his cumulative thesis. Additionally, Rostek provided his statistical, biochemical, and biophysical expertise to many papers including publications in EMBO journal, Science Advances or Nucleic Acid Research. He presented his results at multiple international conferences (RNA conference in Kraków, tRNA conference in France, HEC 2017 Crystallography Meeting). He also took part in CryoEM EMBO course in London in 2019. Back in 2020 Rostek received a START stipend from FNP to conduct research on the regulatory factors of the Elongator complex. Dr. Glatt emphasized that Rostek is an accomplished scientist, who not only has critical thinking and vast knowledge about all the technical aspects but also, as a hobby he is a programmer and knows how to handle big data.
In the next part, Rostek briefly introduced the audience to his research field and presented his Ph.D. thesis results. Then the reviewers, Dr. hab. Magdalena Wołoszyńska and Prof. Dr. hab. Marcin Nowotny read their reviews. Both of them emphasized the high quality of the presented thesis and requested to award it with a distinction. Then Rostek answered their questions, and the following discussion proved his familiarity with the field and his maturity as a researcher ready to continue his career as an independent scientist. The Committee unanimously accepted Rostek’s defence of the doctoral dissertation and granted him a Ph.D. degree in the field of exact and natural sciences in the discipline of Biological Sciences. Moreover, the Doctoral Committee unanimously decided to award his dissertation with distinction.
Recently, Rostek joined the group of Prof. Michal Wieczorek at ETH Zurich, where he works as a PostDoc pursuing the gamma-TuRC complex – a molecular complex responsible for microtubule nucleation.
It was a great pleasure to work with you, Rostek! Good luck!
