Sebastian Deindl (born March 16, 1978 in Basel) is a German-Swedish biochemist, molecular biophysicist and structural biologist. In November 2024, Sebastian Deindl was selected for an Alexander von Humboldt professorship. [1]
Sebastian Deindl studied biochemistry at the University of Tübingen, where he became familiar with structural biology. He completed his degree in 2004 with a diploma. In 2009, he earned his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, under the supervision of John Kuriyan. [2] [3] During this time, his research focused on the biophysical mechanisms of signal transduction and the structure of protein complexes.
After completing his Ph.D., Deindl worked from 2009 to 2014 as a Jane Coffin Childs postdoctoral fellow [4] at the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University, where he was part of Xiaowei Zhuang's research group. There, he developed single-molecule techniques and applied them to the study of chromatin dynamics. [5]
In 2014, Deindl assumed an assistant professorship at Uppsala University. He was promoted to associate professor in 2018 and appointed full professor of Molecular Biophysics in 2021 [6] . At Uppsala University, he leads a research group in the field of mechanistic chromatin biology [7] , which investigates the complex molecular structures and dynamics of nucleic acid-binding proteins and their collective role in regulating gene expression, particularly in the chromatin context. [8] In 2024, he was selected for an Alexander von Humboldt Professorship, Germany’s most highly endowed research award [9] . In this role, Deindl is expected to take up the Chair of Structural Biology at the Interfaculty Institute of Biochemistry (IFIB) at the University of Tübingen. [10]