How do small variations in our genetic code shape who we are, and why do some lead to disease while others don’t?

In the second season of “Keeping up with the Boost Fellows”, GSO’s Birte Seffert travels across Germany to visit the 15 fellows who started their Klaus Tschira Boost Fund projects in 2025. The series offers a closer look at their research, their working environments, and the realities of building a research career today, including what it means to pursue risky research in academia.

This time, we visit Timothy Warwick, a postdoc at the Institute for Cardiovascular Physiology at Goethe University Frankfurt, working at the intersection of epigenetics and RNA biology.

Looking beyond the genome: what Timothy’s research is about

His project explores how differences in our genomes might affect the way these RNAs interact with DNA and how this could affect our risk of developing different diseases.

Working on risky ideas

Timothy’s project tackles questions that are not yet well understood, which means working with uncertainty and without knowing in advance whether the approach will lead to meaningful or publishable results.

Here is some advice Timothy has some to offer:

• Choose the right moment to take risks: Build enough experience so others trust you, but then start as early as possible. Waiting too long can mean missing opportunities.
• Look for funding that explicitly supports risky research.
• Design your project with multiple possible outcomes.
• Build in flexibility and plan “off-ramps” from the start so the project can shift direction instead of failing.
• Follow the data, not just the original idea and be prepared to adjust your path to where the science leads.
• Make sure others are not put at risk: Especially for PhD students, projects should be designed so that their work remains valuable even if the initial idea changes.

The Boost Fund creates space for risky ideas. It allows researchers to test ideas and adapt them as they move forward.

A path shaped by support and trust

Timothy’s path into academia was not predetermined. After realizing he would need a PhD degree to access interesting career options, he applied to just one PhD position in Frankfurt without ever having been to Germany.

The environment he found there made the difference: He was given time, space, and trust to develop in a direction that was new for him and fit him more. Moving from experimental to computational biology meant stepping away from his initial training, learning new skills from scratch, and not being immediately productive.

This experience of support and trust continues to shape how he works with his own students today.

The importance of mentors and role models

Mentors and role models played a central role in Timothy’s path in research, especially in taking on risky project ideas.

“It´s important to have mentors and role models who support you in those kinds of projects. And finding and identifying those people as early as you can to push you and to make sure that you’re open to this kind of research.”

Timothy stresses that finding mentors requires initiative, reaching out, maintaining relationships, and showing appreciation for the time and guidance others invest.

Getting feedback from students

A key learning for Timothy is that supervision is not one-directional.

“Some of the most valuable feedback is from the students that I supervise. I ask them for feedback on my supervision style and ask them to be strong about what they want from me. I think that makes the whole relationship so much easier to run when you’re not guessing.”

He applies the same principle to his own work, for example, by testing ideas and proposals with students to see whether they are understandable and engaging.

“If they understand it and get excited by it, it’s usually a good mark.”

What the Boost Fund changed

For Timothy, the most immediate impact was confidence. Receiving his first independent third-party funding, he felt that the project was truly his and that he had the space to shape it independently.

A second key aspect was the KONU career development workshops, which are part of the Boost Fund Fellowship. He describes these as the most valuable workshops he has attended so far. In particular, the session on leadership helped him understand that leadership does not require perfection, but openness, transparency, and the ability to deal with expectations in a realistic way.

Finally, the Boost Fund created access to a peer group beyond his own field and allowed him to reflect on where he stands, compare different academic environments, and look at his own work from a broader perspective.

About the program

The Boost Fund supports postdoctoral researchers and early group leaders in Germany with flexible funding for independent, often higher-risk and interdisciplinary projects, combined with career development opportunities and access to a strong peer network.

The program addresses a critical phase after the PhD, where researchers are expected to develop independence, but often lack the resources and flexibility to do so. It creates space to explore new directions, build collaborations, and take responsibility early on.