Biography

I am interested in the intersection of structural biology and professional software development to create scalable applications enabling life-scientists to benefit more from three-dimensional structural data. I am especially interested in better integration of 3D molecular coordinates with annotations and primary data. Most importantly I want the resulting visualization to be accessible through a web browser to enable easy access for all interested parties, including colleagues, collaborators, reviewers and educators.

During the work on my PhD thesis (“The dynamic coupling interface of G protein coupled receptors – A molecular dynamics simulations study”) I gained in-depth expertise not only in structural biology but also in handling, analyzing and visualizing large structural datasets. Closely cooperating with experimental biophysicists/-chemists and comparing their data with my computational results has been vital to the success of the work and has lead to multiple peer-reviewed publications.

I started and continue to lead an open-source software project (NGL Viewer) for the visualization of 3D molecular data, including the display of atomic coordinates and electron densities. Since then the viewer has been adopted by various websites including the RCSB Protein Data Bank at the San Diego Supercomputer Center. Further, the viewer has started to attract community code contributions highlighting the need for such a software and attesting the project’s code quality.

Combining my experience in structural biology/biophysics and structural bioinformatics allows me to effectively develop innovative visualization software for 3D molecular data. My work makes experimental data and annotations more accessible to a wide audience of researchers, educators and the interested public. I am seeking grant and collaboration opportunities to further develop the NGL Viewer as a foundation to create specialized but accessible visualization solutions for 3D molecular data.