Work address: Muthgasse 11, 1190 Wien

Email: christine.horejs@boku.ac.at

Homepage: www.boku.ac.at

Nationality: Austrian

Languages: English, German, Polish

Keywords: Computer simulations, protein structure

Christine Horejs studied Biotechnology at the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences in Vienna. As an undergraduate she worked at the Institute for Material Sciences and Process Engineering. There she learnt the principles of molecular dynamics simulations (MD). Such knowledge allowed her to complete her diploma thesis on the prediction of the tertiary structure of a folded protein.

After obtaining her MSc degree at the Department of Nanobiotechnology in October 2007, she started her PhD at the same Department under the supervision of Prof. Dietmar Pum and Dr. Rupert Tscheliessnig. Her PhD thesis focuses on the understanding of the molecular mechanisms of S-layer protein assembly and crystallization, in a combined effort from both experimental and theoretical viewpoints. Her PhD research is funded by a three-year DOC-fFORTE fellowship awarded by the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Within the auspices of this grant, she established a collaboration with Prof. Murugappan Muthukumar of the Polymer Science and Engineering Center at the University of Massachusetts. Such an ongoing collaboration, which has expanded from September 20098 until today, aims at gaining insights into the crystallization behavior and the structure of S-layer proteins by means of sophisticated computer simulation algorithms.