Kerstin Göpfrich
Kerstin Göpfrich is a Professor for Synthetic Biology at Heidelberg University and a Group Leader at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research.
Her career path offers an inspiring look at navigating a highly successful, fast-paced academic trajectory in an interdisciplinary field. After studying physics at the Universities of Erlangen-Nürnberg and Cambridge, and completing her PhD at Cambridge's renowned Cavendish Laboratory, she secured a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship for her postdoctoral research at the MPI. She then quickly transitioned into independent leadership, establishing her own Research Group at the MPI for Medical Research in Heidelberg. Her lab focuses on the bottom-up engineering of artificial cells using innovative tools like DNA and RNA origami.
Not only has her rapid career pogression led to a full professorship at the ZMBH, but Kerstin is also deeply committed to science communication. She co-founded "Ring-a-Scientist", an outreach platform that brings researchers directly into school classrooms.
Check out her lab here: https://goepfrichgroup.de/research/
