Description

Have you ever wondered what your advisor struggled with as a graduate student? What they struggle with now? Growing up in Science is a conversation series featuring personal narratives of becoming and being a scientist.

On 13 January we invite professor Marcel Brass to share his life story, with a focus on struggles, failures, doubts, detours, and weaknesses.

Registration is not mandatory, but gives us an estimate of the number of chairs we'll need. This event will take place in English.

Official story

Prof. Dr. Marcel Brass is an Einstein Strategic Professor at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. He completed his psychology studies at Freie Universität Berlin with the highest distinction and earned his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research. As a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig, he conducted seminal work on the neural basis of cognitive flexibility and received a prestigious Heisenberg Fellowship. In 2006, he chose a research professorship at Ghent University over offers from the University of Exeter and SISSA Trieste. This research professorship was renewed twice, spanning a total of 13 years, during which he secured substantial third-party funding from national and international agencies, including FWO, the Templeton Foundation, and the European Commission. In 2020, he was awarded the prestigious Einstein Strategic Professorship to work within the Excellence Cluster Science of Intelligence and the Berlin School of Mind and Brain. Prof. Brass has more than 250 publications in peer reviewed journals such as Science, Nature Neuroscience and PNAS with more than 30.000 citations (google scholar).

Unofficial story

Prof. Dr. Marcel Brass began studying history and philosophy at Freie Universität Berlin, but soon abandoned it as the wrong choice. He completed a psychology diploma instead and, despite having no background in experimental psychology, secured a doctoral position in the area of human cognition at the Max Planck Institute for Psychological Research. Prof. Brass finished his PhD in 2000 without distinction. While first planning a postdoc in the USA, for personal reasons he rather started as a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Human, Cognitive and Brain Sciences. He was invited to interview for a Max Planck Junior Research Group in 2005, but was unsuccessful. After unsuccessful job interviews at universities in Switzerland, the Netherlands, and Germany, he received a position at Ghent University.  In 2010 and 2011, he was twice invited to interview for ERC starting grants but failed to secure funding both times. In 2023, he failed to secure an ERC Synergy grant after making it to the interview round. In 2025, he was part of a renewal proposal for the Excellence Cluster ‘Science of Intelligence’ but the cluster was not renewed. Over the past 25 years, Prof. Brass has received countless rejections from journals such as Science, Nature, Nature Neuroscience, and PNAS.