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 (and also site visits) he clearly stood out as a great capacity and leader of the field with magnificent overlaps and complements 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 contribution to the neuroscience community at Aarhus University and DANDRITE has been numerous and very important. A major interest of his was understanding circuitry that guides emotionally-dependent behaviors with a particular focus on GABAergic neurons in the hippocampus and amygdala. In this work, he also continued collaborations with many important European neuroscience centers and he had a very strong, positive influence on our international neuroscience network. These studies and capacities and a strong commitment to collaborations with DANDRITE scientists made him one of the instigators of the research center PROMEMO, which focuses on mechanisms underlying emotional memory. In addition to his superior scientific qualifications, 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 much more to him than colleagues.

He struggled for the last years with severe cancer and complications with his treatment, but he stayed optimistic and caring to the very end. We will forever have Marco in our thoughts and research - bringing up his name and example will always be a joy.