Program

Juergen Plitzko

Juergen Plitzko is Professor for Biomolecular Electron Microscopy at the Bijvoet Center for Biomolecular Research, Utrecht University (2013-present) and he is still associated with his cryo-EM group to the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried, Germany. Additionally, he holds a consulting group leader position at CEITEC, Central European Institute of Technology, at the Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic (2012-present).

Plitzko received his Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from the University of Stuttgart while working at the Max Planck Institute of Metals Research, Stuttgart (1994-1998). He has held positions at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore (1999-2002) and at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, Department of Molecular Structural Biology (2002-2013).

Juergen Plitzko’s general research objective is the development and application of innovative tools and technologies in cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and more specifically in cryo-electron tomography (cryo-ET), which will in the end facilitate structurefunction characterization of macromolecular complexes in their native cellular context, by potentially bridging the gap between molecular and cellular structural biology.

Given the progress to date, it seems reasonable to expect that the integration of different methodologies and options to quantitatively study cell architecture, protein organization and individual macromolecular key players, will be placed among the best tools to decipher the complex behaviour and dynamics of cells at molecular resolution.