Anna Theresa Cavasin

Supervisors: Prof. Michael Kolbe (HZI, UHH), Prof. Holger Stark (MPI for Multidisciplinary Sciences), Prof. Matthias Rarey (UHH)

Cryo-electron microscopy has evolved into one of the standard techniques in structural biology in recent years. Purified molecules in aqueous solution are rapidly frozen and then analyzed by transmission electron microscopy. As a single particle technique, cryo-EM allows for elucidating large macromolecular complexes and for inferring information on protein dynamics. The aim of the DASHH project is to improve the state of the art computational methods for density map generation from experimental cryo-EM images in the presence of structural heterogeneity.
Theresa studied Chemical Biology at the Technical University of Dortmund and the Sorbonne University in Paris for her undergraduate studies. During her Bachelor thesis in structure-based computational drug design, she developed a strong interest in computational techniques. She joined the Computational Chemistry department at the Bayer AG in Wuppertal for half a year to work on an in silico ADME project. Afterwards, she went on to study at the University of Hamburg where she obtained a Master’s degree in Bioinformatics. Theresa’s research interests – apart from her current PhD project in cryo-electron microscopy – focus on structure-based computational drug design and machine learning approaches for small molecule property prediction. By developing better structure elucidation methods within her PhD studies, she hopes to pave the way for new developments in structure-based drug design, which relies crucially on accurate target structures.

An interesting portrait concerning Theresa's field of research and her motivation can be found here: HIDA Portrait