Marco contacted us from Oxford in 2015, inquiring for possibilities to join the neuroscience community at DANDRITE and Aarhus University. Fortunately, the Department of Biomedicine had an opening for a professorship in neuroscience soon thereafter and among very many applicants, he clearly stood out as a great capacity and leader of the field and with magnificent overlaps and complement in his research interests to our community. Fortunately, he accepted the offer and started in 2016 as a professor at the Department of Biomedicine and in a defining role as a DANDRITE affiliated researcher.

His contributions to the neuroscience community at PROMEMO, DANDRITE, and Aarhus University have been numerous and significant. A major interest of his was the understanding of circuitry that guides emotion-dependent behaviours with a particular focus on GABAergic neurons in the hippocampus and amygdala. In this work, he also continued collaborations with many important neuroscience scientists and centers in Europe, and he had a very strong, positive influence on our international neuroscience network. These studies, capacities, and a strong commitment to collaborations with DANDRITE scientists made him one of the instigators of the research center PROMEMO (the acronym was his doing), that focusses on mechanisms underlying emotional memory. Marco contributed to the progress and success of PROMEMO with excellent research, stimulating discussions, and a strong sense of community.

In addition to his superior qualifications in science, he was also highly dedicated to the education and training of undergraduate and graduate students in neuroscience by developing and coordinating courses of the highest quality for medical and PhD students. Furthermore, Marco mentored a large number of successful junior scientists. He respected them as scientists and he cared for them as individuals - they were so much more to him than colleagues. Marco was an eminent neuroscientist and the most wonderful, kind, and giving colleague, always genuinely interested in the people around him. He will be sorely missed.

For the last years he struggled with severe cancer and complications from his treatment, but he stayed optimistic and caring to the very end. We will forever have Marco in our thoughts and research – appreciating the lasting impact he left on science and on us.

The PROMEMO PIs
Poul, Sadegh, Magnus, Hanne, and Anders