My Work: I am an experimentalist, conducting basic research in molecular biophysics. My research focuses on the structure, function and dynamics of biological macro-molecules. One of my main interests lies in the ultra-rapid, time-resolved X-ray structure analysis of proteins. With this technique, I am able to follow chemical reaction in biologically relevant molecules from the beginning to the very end, in real time. For this, the traditional rotation/oscillation method in X-ray crystallography has to be replaced by the experimentally more demanding Laue method. The data sets are collected at third generation synchrotrons such as the Advanced Photon Source (APS), using specialized beam lines like 14-ID-B of BioCARS (visit BioCARS). The data sets are four-dimensional, 3-space dimensions, plus the time. They contain the information necessary to determine the structures of the transient states and their kinetics. Other techniques of interest to investigate bio-molecules include electron precession spectroscopy (EPR), Mossbauer spectroscopy, x-ray absorption spectroscopy (XAS) and holographic imaging with X-rays.

Inspired by Keith Moffat, who pioneered time-resolved crystallography, and his colleagues at the University of Chicago, I solved one of the largest remaining problems in time-resolved crystallography, that being the extraction of the structures of transient reaction intermediates and their kinetics from the time-resolved X-ray data in a global way. At the base of this separation lies the singular value decomposition, a method of linear algebra, which partitions time and space-dependent variables from the four-dimensional data sets. Since the field of time-resolved X-ray crystallography quickly approaches the ultra-fast time regime faster than 1 pico-second (10-12 s) using smaller and smaller crystal sizes, new methods have to be developed to cope with these developments, experimentally as well as theoretically.

My immediate goals include building a new molecular biophysics laboratory within the UWM Physics Department. This lab will be equipped with a micro-focus X-ray source to derive scattering data from very small protein crystals. In line with the scattering data, spectroscopic data are recorded at the same time and on the same crystals using a micro-spectrophotometer mounted on top of the X-ray source. This will bring information from spectroscopy and structure determination together, which will be decisive when investigating the properties of new materials found in living nature.

About me: I obtained my Dr. rer. nat. (the German PhD equivalent) in Biophysics at the Technical University of Munich. Previous to UWM, I was a post-doc at the University of Chicago and at the Advanced Photon Source in Argonne, IL. I have also been a Senior Scientist at the Technical University of Munich. Further, I obtained an advanced degree called Habilitation in Experimental Physics, which allows me to teach this specialty subject in German universities.