Elly Tanaka

Tanaka started her own lab at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Cell Biology and Genetics (MPI-CBG) in Dresden (Germany) in 1999.^[1] Her research focused on axolotl spinal cord regeneration.^[1]

In 2008, Tanaka became a professor at the Center for Regenerative Therapies Dresden (CRTD) of the Technische Universität Dresden.^[1] She became director of the center in 2014,^[2] before becoming senior scientist at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology (IMP) in Vienna in 2016.^[3] In 2024, Tanaka joined the Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (IMBA) as Scientific Director.^[4] The Mexican salamander species axolotl is Tanaka's main model system for her research and is also working to translate them to mouse and human tissue.^[5] Using innovative molecular biology and microscopy methods, she identified those stem cells that underlie the regeneration of limbs and the spinal cord.^[6] She is a member of the Editorial Board for Developmental Cell.^[7]

Tanaka was elected a member of the Academia Europaea in 2015,^[2] of the European Molecular Biology Organisation in 2017, the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 2021,^[8][9] the National Academy of Sciences in 2023^[10] and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina in 2024.^[11] She was awarded the Ernst Schering Prize in 2017, highlighting Tanaka as "the leading expert in the field of regeneration biology".^[6] In 2018, she was awarded the Erwin Schrödinger Prize of the Austrian Academy of Sciences for lifetime achievements.^[12] In 2020, she was awarded the FEBS | EMBO Women in Science Award.^[13] In 2025, Tanaka was awarded both the Schleiden Medal^[14] and the Wittgenstein Award.^[15]