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Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftliche FakultätAG Prof. Behrmann

Narrative CV

Elmar grew up in Altenbeken, a small rural town located within the second largest nature reserve in North Rhine-Westphalia. After graduating from a public high school in the neighbouring spa town of Bad Driburg in 2003, he moved to Bielefeld, the region's most populous city, to begin his biochemistry studies. Towards the end of his studies in 2006, Elmar spent a year at the University of Notre Dame on the southern tip of Lake Michigan near Chicago. It was there, in the laboratory of Bradley Smith, that he discovered two things that would influence his future career path: firstly, although he enjoyed organic chemistry, he was not a competent practical chemist; and secondly, he enjoyed finding alternative solutions to problems.

Returning to biochemistry, Elmar did his diploma thesis in 2008 in Reinhard Jahn's lab at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen, where he developed a luminescence-based assay for the high-throughput quantification of protein-protein interactions at synaptic membranes. Although fascinated by harnessing the power of visible light to understand protein interactions, he was frustrated that all interactions remained invisible. A talk by Tom Kirchhausen on cryo-electron microscopy of the clathrin coat inspired Elmar to look for ways to incorporate cryo-EM into his PhD thesis, in the hope of being able to visualise the protein complexes that had previously only been identifiable through numbers in his luminescence assays. Fortunately, Stefan Raunser, a young Emmy Noether group leader who is now one of the institute's directors, had started a small group at the MPI for Molecular Physiology in Dortmund. When Elmar joined Stefan's group in late 2008, he gained first-hand experience of establishing high-resolution cryo-EM, as the microscope had recently been flooded and nothing was working properly. During his PhD, Elmar's main success was solving the high-resolution structure of a muscle motor complex, a task which also required the development of specialised software to account for the conformational heterogeneity encountered in the samples.

In order to continue using cryo-EM to decipher molecular motion in proteins and to move away from helical assemblies, Elmar joined Christian Spahn's lab at the Charité for his postdoctoral research in 2012. As part of a service project for a collaborative research centre, he interacted with various groups in Berlin, helping them to incorporate cryo-EM into their scientific work. His main scientific achievement was obtaining structural snapshots of actively translating human ribosomes using cryo-EM. In 2014, funding from the Volkswagen Foundation enabled Elmar to set up his own small laboratory at the research centre caesar, now the MPI for Neurobiology of Behaviour in Bonn, where he was mentored by Benjamin Kaupp. As in Berlin, Elmar continued to apply cryo-EM to various scientific problems, all of which were connected by the common theme of understanding molecular motion and its impact on protein activity. In 2017, Elmar secured funding from the Max Planck Society to expand his lab at the caesar research centre. Towards the end of 2017, he accepted an offer from the University of Cologne to set up a high-resolution cryo-EM platform from scratch. Now an associate professor of structural biochemistry, he continues to use cryo-EM as a structural technique capable of working with heterogeneous samples to link molecular motions in proteins to their activity. However, he has recently shifted his focus towards proteins that react to light.

Education and Professional Experience

  • 2022 - 2024: Managing Director of the Institute of Biochemistry University of Cologne (Germany)
  • 2017 - present: Associate Professor for Structural Biochemistry (W2) at the University of Cologne (Germany)
  • 2017 - 2020: MPG Group leader at the research center caesar, now MPI for Neurobiology of Behavior - caesar (Germany)
  • 2014 - 2017: Group leader at the research center caesar, now MPI for Neurobiology of Behavior - caesar (Germany)
  • 2012 - 2014: Post-Doc at the Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin (Germany) with Prof. Christian Spahn (topic: cryo-EM of ribosomes)
  • 2008 - 2012: PhD thesis at the Max Planck Institute for Molecular Physiology (Dortmund, Germany) with Prof. Stefan Raunser (topic: cryo-EM of helical assemblies)
  • 2008: Diploma thesis at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry, now MPI for Multidisciplinary Sciences, (Göttingen, Germany) with Prof. Reinhard Jahn (topic: high-throuput assay development for detection of protein-protein interactions)
  • 2006: Research stay at the University of Notre Dame (USA) with Prof. Bradley Smith (topic: organic synthesis of membrane interacting macrocycles)
  • 2003 - 2008: Studies of Biochemistry at the University Bielefeld (Germany)
  • 2002: Abitur (German university entrance exam) from the Städtisches Gymnasium Bad Driburg (Germany)

Fellowships and Honours