Scholarship and Biography
Dorothee Kern is Professor of Biochemistry at Brandeis University and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She received her PhD at the Martin Luther University in Halle, Germany and then carried out her postdoctoral studies at UC Berkeley. She joined the faculty at Brandeis University in 1998.
Her research group studies the dynamical nature of proteins with the goal to reveal the interplay between structure, dynamics and function. She has been a major contributor in the experimental characterization of protein dynamics during enzyme catalysis and signaling. Her group is exploring the evolution of complex biological function as well as rational drug design by combining a variety of biophysical methods such as NMR, x-ray, fast kinetics, fluorescence, MD simulation, ancestral reconstruction and life-cell imaging.
Dr. Kern is the recipient of the Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry from the American Chemical Society, the Dayhoff Award from the Biophysical Society, the Young Investigator Award of the International Association for Protein Structure Analysis and Proteomics, the Strage Award for Aspiring Young Science Faculty, was awarded the National Lecturer of the Biophysical Society, and is elected member of National Academy of Science of Germany Leopoldina. Before her professional scientific carrier, she was captain of the German National Basketball team for many years and won the MVP award of the German National league.