Wolfgang Baumeister - Curriculum Vitae#

Wolfgang Baumeister obtained his PhD from the University of Düsseldorf in 1973. 1981/82 he spent time at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, England as a Heisenberg Fellow. In 1982 he joined the Max-Planck-Institute of Biochemistry in Martinsried as a group leader (C3). Since 1988 he is a Scientific Member of the MPG and Director of the Department of Structural Biology. He is an Honorary Professor at the Technical University of Munich in the departments of Physics and Chemistry. Since 2019 he is also a Distinguished Professor at ShanghaiTech University.

Professor Baumeister’s main interest is the development of new tools and methods for the structural characterization of molecules and cells. He is particularly interested in the development of cryo-electron tomography for structural studies of molecular and supramolecular structures in situ, i. e. in their native cellular environment. A major focus of his work is the molecular machinery of protein degradation, in particular the proteasome, and autophagy.

He is a member of several academies including the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, the German Academy of Sciences, Leopoldina, the US National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

He has received honorary degrees from the Masaryk University in Brno, Czech Republic and the Heinrich Heine University, Düsseldorf.