News

Dr. Guinevere Mathies joined our department on June 1st as an Emmy Noether group leader. She studied Physics in Leiden, the Netherlands, and did her PhD also in Leiden in the same department with Prof. Edgar Groenen. During her PhD she developed high-frequency EPR instrumentation to study high-spin transition-metal sites in biological systems. In 2012 she joined the group of Prof. Robert Griffin in the Chemistry Department of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as a postdoctoral fellow to work on magic-angle spinning (MAS) NMR and Dynamic Nuclear Polarization (DNP). DNP is a method to enhance the sensitivity of MAS NMR - something that is indeed much needed. High-resolution MAS NMR is a new, exciting tool of structural biology, but its inherent low sensitivity currently limits application to smaller, less complex biological systems. DNP can alleviate this issue. Here in Konstanz she will continue to work on the development of DNP methods, taking a somewhat unconventional approach. The aim is not only to further enhance the sensitivity of MAS NMR at very high magnetic fields, but also to design DNP methods that can be more widely used in labs at a lower cost.