Prof. Dr. Frauke Gräter

Frauke Gräter is group leader of the Molecular Biomechanics group (MBM) at HITS and Professor for Molecular Biomechanics at Heidelberg University.

She studied chemistry in Tübingen, Kyoto and Heidelberg and did her Ph.D. at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, Göttingen, Germany, in 2005. After postdoc positions, among them at Columbia University, New York, USA, she became leader of a junior group in Shanghai, China, at the partner institute of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Max Planck Society. Since 2009, Frauke Gräter has been group leader of the Molecular Biomechanics (MBM) group at HITS. Additionally, she became professor for molecular biomechanics at Heidelberg University in 2014, and from 2017 until 2020 she was member of the board of directors at the Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing (IWR) at Heidelberg University. She served as Scientific Director of HITS from 2021-2022.

The major interest of Frauke Gräter and her Molecular Biomechanics group is to decipher how proteins have been designed to specifically respond to mechanical forces in the cellular environment or as a biomaterial. For this purpose, they use high performance computing (HPC) and simulation techniques on different scales. In her research, Frauke Gräter covers medicine topics like blood clotting as well as materials science on spider silk or collagen.  For her outstanding impact on HPC research, Frauke Gräter was awarded PRACE Ada Lovelace Award for HPC. In 2020, she received an ERC Consolidator Grant awarded by the European Research Council. As of 2021, she is a member of the Editorial Board of the “Biophysical Journal”.

Research Interests

Proteins, the building blocks of life, are regularly subjected and respond to mechanical forces. Me and my group at HITS want to unravel the coupling of mechanics and biochemistry at the molecular level. To this end, we use computational methods at the molecular scale and beyond, and work closely with experimentalists.

• Mechanobiology, mechanosensing, nanomaterials
• Computational Biochemistry and Biophysics
• Molecular Dynamics simulations, quantum mechanical calculations
• Multi-scale modelling, continuum mechanics

Curriculum Vitae

Since 2021 Member of the Editorial Board of the “Biophysical Journal”
2021-2022 Scientific Director of HITS
2017-2020 Member of the Board of Directors, Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing, Heidelberg University
Since 2014 Professor for Molecular Biomechanics at Heidelberg University
Since 2009 Group leader „Molecular Biomechanics“ at HITS
2009-2014 Leader Klaus Tschira Lab in Shanghai
2007-2009 Junior group leader “Protein Mechanics and Evolution” jointly at the Bioquant, Heidelberg University and the MPG-CAS Partner Institute for Computational Biology (PICB) in Shanghai, China
2006-2007 PostDoc at the Department of Biology and Chemistry at Columbia University, US
2005-2006 PostDoc at the Max-Planck-Institute of Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany
2002-2005 PhD at the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica in China and the Max-Planck-Institute of Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, Germany
1998-2002 Studies of Chemistry at Heidelberg University, Germany
1999-2000 Exchange Program Kyoto University, Japan
1996-1998 Studies of Chemistry at the University of Tübingen, Germany

Memberships

• American Biophysical Society
• German Chemical Society
• German Physical Society
• German Biophysical Society
• Interdisciplinary Center for Scientific Computing, Heidelberg
• Center for Modelling and Simulation in the Biosciences, Heidelberg

Publications

Please see the MBM publications list here.

Teaching

I am teaching courses at Heidelberg University, as listed here.