After several years as group leader of an Emmy Noether and ERC consolidator research group at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), the biophysical chemist Edward A. Lemke has taken up a professorship for synthetic biophysics at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. He has also become Adjunct Director at the Institute of Molecular Biology (IMB) in Mainz. Combining new research methods and expertise in both chemistry, biophysics and cell biology, he has established himself as one of the most innovative researchers in the field of intrinsically disordered proteins. He is speaker of the newly established Priority Programme on molecular mechanisms of functional phase separation of the DFG and will continue his research on the "dark proteome" with his colleagues in Mainz.