Independent Group Leader, Membrane Biophysics and artificial cells @ MPI of Colloids and Interfaces, Department Sustainable and Bio-inspired Materials
Prof. Rumiana Dimova obtained her PhD at Bordeaux University (France) in 1999 and joined the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces as a postdoctoral fellow, where she became a group leader in 2000 and leads the Biophysics Lab. Her research centers on membrane biophysics, biomolecular condensates, and the development of quantitative optical tools for characterizing soft matter systems. The main workhorse of her group is giant unilamellar vesicles, i.e. cell-sized lipid membrane bubbles that serve as minimal models of living cells and as platforms for building synthetic biology systems from the bottom up; R. Dimova is the co-editor of The Giant Vesicle Book, the standard reference in the field. She was awarded the the Liesegang Prize of the German Colloid Society in 2021 in recognition of her work on lipid bilayers and biomembranes, and the Avanti/EBSA Award in 2025 for pioneering development work on giant unilamellar vesicles. Her group has made substantial contributions to understanding biomolecular condensates and their interactions with biomembranes, and she is the Coordinator of ComeInCell, a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Doctoral Network on Integrative Synthetic Cell Design bringing together twelve European institutions to train the next generation of synthetic cell scientists.