Prof. Dr. Doris Heinrich was appointed University Professor and Head of the newly established Group of "Biotechnical Micro- and Nanosystems in Life Sciences" at the Department of Mathematics and Natural Sciences of TU Ilmenau on 1 October 2020. At the same time, the internationally renowned biophysicist took over as the new director of the Institute for Bioprocess and Analytical Measurement Technology (iba) in Heiligenstadt, an affiliated institute of the TU Ilmenau.
Prof. Dr. Doris Heinrich studied physics in Würzburg and at the University of Texas at Austin (USA). After her doctorate at the TU Munich in 2003, further research stations followed at the TU Munich, UCLA (USA) and at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich, interrupted by a one-year position as a business consultant at the management consultancy McKinsey&Company. Since 2013, she was Associate Professor at Leiden University (The Netherlands) and Research Group Leader at the Fraunhofer Institute for Silicate Research (Fraunhofer-ISC) in Würzburg. There she was deputy managing director of the Fraunhofer Project Center for Stem Cell Process Technology from 2019 and additionally head of the Fraunhofer Center "3D Nano Cell".
At TU Ilmenau, Professor Heinrich will expand the spectrum in teaching and research in the field of life sciences with her work on the physics of living cells, in particular the quantitative analysis and control of cell interactions and cell functions, and further promote the successful collaboration between the university and iba.