Director @ MPI of Biochemistry, Department Cellular and Molecular Biophysics
Prof. Petra Schwille studied physics and philosophy at the Universities of Stuttgart and Göttingen, and completed her PhD in the laboratory of Nobel laureate Manfred Eigen at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Cornell University. She has been Director of the Department of Cellular and Molecular Biophysics at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried since 2011, and honorary professor at the Faculty of Physics at LMU Munich since 2012. Her research focuses on the bottom-up construction of synthetic cells from purified biological components, with particular expertise in membrane self-organization, protein reconstitution in lipid bilayers, and 3D protein microfabrication by two-photon polymerization. Her work has been recognized with the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German Research Foundation (2010) and the Otto Warburg Medal (2022). She recently received an ERC Synergy Grant (MetaDivide) to build a minimal synthetic cell capable of autonomous division and metabolism.