Kerstin Blank

Biography

Kerstin G. Blank obtained a diploma in Biotechnology from the University of Applied Sciences in Jena in 2000. After 3 years as a project manager in Industry, she returned to Academia. She obtained a PhD in Biophysics from Ludwig-Maximilians University in Munich in 2006. After two short postdoctoral stays at the Universities in Strasbourg and Leuven, she became assistant professor at Radboud University in Nijmegen in 2009. In 2014, she moved to the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam where she led the Max Planck Research Group ‘Mechano(bio)chemistry’. Since October 2021, she is full professor at Johannes Kepler University Linz where she heads the Department of Biomolecular & Selforganizing Matter. She is co-founder of the Gordon Research Conference on Multiscale Mechanochemistry & Mechanobiology. The main themes of her research are 1) mechanical structure-function relationships of protein-protein and protein-surface interactions, 2) protein-based molecular force sensors, 3) molecularly controlled mechanoresponsive hydrogels and 4) mechanosensing at cell-material interfaces.

RSC journal affiliations

• Associate Editor, RSC Mechanochemistry