Wojciech Pokrzywa of IIMCB awarded the title of professor
Wojciech Pokrzywa, Head of the Laboratory of Protein Metabolism at the International Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology in Warsaw, has been awarded the title of professor of exact and natural sciences in the discipline of biological sciences. The title was conferred by the President of the Republic of Poland by a decision dated 7 April 2026.
Since mid-2017, he has led a research group investigating protein metabolism, with a focus on translation control, the ubiquitin–proteasome system, molecular chaperone networks, and muscle exophers. He earned his Ph.D. at the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium), where he studied the ubiquitin–proteasome system in yeast, and then completed postdoctoral training in Prof. Thorsten Hoppe’s group at the University of Cologne (Germany), exploring proteostasis during development and ageing in C. elegans - work that resulted in two first-author Cell publications.
He has authored over 45 scientific articles, including articles in Nature Communications, EMBO Journal, Nucleic Acids Research, EMBO Reports, Human Molecular Genetics, and PLOS Genetics. Furthermore, he has secured ~€3.6M in competitive research funding from organisations such as EMBO, the German Research Foundation, the National Science Centre, and the Foundation for Polish Science.
Moreover, he and his team were recognised for outstanding scientific achievement with an award from the Minister of Science and Higher Education (2024) and a distinction from the Second Division of the Polish Academy of Sciences (2024).
The team led by Prof. Pokrzywa research focuses on proteostasis, the coordinated control of protein synthesis, folding, and degradation. They study how this balance is maintained by the ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS), molecular chaperones, and extracellular quality-control pathways such as exophers. In this context, they investigate the nucleolus as a stress -responsive proteostasis hub that supports protein quality control under challenging conditions. Professor Pokrzywa’s team also explores the molecular basis of rare diseases associated with proteostasis defects.
An additional area of Prof. Pokrzywa’s activity is science communication. Together with his team, he developed DEGRADATOR, an educational computer game devoted to protein degradation. The game received 3rd place in the Fully Developed Games category at the 12th International Educational Games Competition. The project reflects the laboratory’s broader commitment to making molecular mechanisms understandable beyond the specialist research community.