Protein Biophysics at DTU Bioengineering

We aim to push the boundaries of our understanding of the mechanisms and driving forces of biomolecular assembly in disease and function

  • November 2025
  • October 2025
  • Alex was invited as a speaker at the NWO Biophysics Conference held on 6 and 7 October 2025 in Veldhoven, in the Netherlands.
    In his talk, he focused on how sequence-perturbative approaches, such as those inspired by Phi-value analysis, can be used to investigate the folding, aggregation and condensate formation of intrinsically disordered proteins.
  • August 2025
  • We hosted the 2nd Danish LLPS Day in DTU. The event brought together friends and researchers from across Denmark, and featured a full day of talks on topics ranging from protein condensates and DNA interactions to microfluidics, simulations and imaging techniques.
  • Bled succesfully defended his MSc thesis. His examiner was Vito Fodera’ from KU. Big congratulations, Bled!
  • Another success to celebrate – Steffen defended his MSc thesis with flying colours! His examiner was Joseph Rogers from KU. Steffen will be working with us until the end of September before starting a new job in Munich. Huge congratulations, Steffen!
  • New member – Stephanie joins our group for her MSc thesis project. She will be working on the PEPSOL project with our postdoc Jacob. Welcome, Stephanie!
  • July 2025
  • We have been awarded a DTU Discovery Grant to support the early development of our business project on mRNA display.
    This grant will allow Rasmus, Baptiste and Steffen to work on key aspects of the project over the next six months and explore its startup potential!
  • June 2025
  • Lars, Maša and Sophie have attended the 15th EBSA Congress held at Palazzo dei Congressi in the heart of Rome!

    The event was co-organized by the Italian Society for Pure and Applied Biophysics (SIBPA) and the European Biophysical Societies’ Association (EBSA).
  • Congratulations are in order for our Postdoc Rasmus as he has been awarded the prestigious MIT Postdoctoral Fellowship to join the Young Lab at the Whitehead Institute!

    The fellowship is part of the Novo Nordisk Foundation’s prestigious program supporting early-career researchers through 3-4 year fellowships at world-leading institutions.
    His project aims to uncover how mutations in non-coding DNA regions affect gene regulation, with the goal of predicting genomic changes that contribute to disease development.
    We look forward to following Rasmus’ exciting adventures at MIT!
  • New member – Maya joins our group for a summer internship. She will be working on the mRNA display project with Rasmus and Baptiste. Welcome, Maya!
  • May 2025
  • New member – Lilou joins our group for a BSc internship working on the seed amplification assay with Azad. Welcome, Lilou!
  • White coats off, running shoes on! This year, part of our team took part in the 5km relay at DTU and the Royal Run in the heart of Copenhagen.
  • Our postdoc Rasmus took part in the FidaBio user Group Meeting, which brought together a vibrant community of researchers from France, Switzerland and Belgium right in the heart of Paris.

    Rasmus gave a captivating talk on TDIPS and Capflex, two methods developed in our lab that harness the power of microfluidics for protein phase separation studies using the FIDA1 instrument.
  • The international biomolecular condensates community came together for an exciting three-day conference on Biomolecular condensates: From fundamental principles to applications in health and biotech. The event was organized by Magnus Kjærgaard (Aarhus University), Kresten Lindorff-Larsen (University of Copenhagen), and Alex at the Carlsberg Academy, the spectacular mansion build by the brewer J.C. Jacobsen in Copenhagen.

    These three days were packed with innovative talks and inspiring discussions. For the occasion, our postdoc Rasmus gave a talk on ”Large-scale measurement of protein and RNA partitioning to biomolecular condensates using mRNA-display”, and many of our PhD students and postdocs presented a poster.

    We thank the Novo Nordisk Foundation for generously funding the event, and FidaBio and Labbot for sponsoring travel awards.
  • April 2025
  • Zoe Manglano Artuñedo joins our group as visiting PhD student from Universitat Autonoma of Barcelona. Zoe works in the group of Prof. Salvador Ventura and will stay with us for three months. Welcome, Zoe!
  • March 2025
  • Soumik has joined the tenure track as an Assistant Professor in DTU Bioengineering. The whole lab celebrated this achievement and wishes him the best for this new exciting adventure! Huge congratulations, Soumik!
  • A big chunk of the group traveled to Sweden for the ADAM 10 conference organized by Elin Esbjörner and Pernilla Wittung-Stafshede at Chalmers University in Gothenburg!
    Jacob gave a great talk and many members presented posters!
  • New member – Anastasia joins our group for a bachelor’s special course working on the aggregation and phase-separation of TDP-43 with Sophie and Fede. Welcome, Anastasia!
  • Kritika and Soumik presented baby Ivaan to the group!
  • Joseph Chamieh and Hervé Cottet from Université de Montpellier gave us a double seminar on “Taylor dispersion analysis of nanoparticles and protein aggregation”.
  • Casey succesfully defended her MSc thesis. Her examiner was Anders Malmendal from Roskilde University. Big congratulations, Casey!
  • February 2025
  • New member – Steffen joins our group for his Master’s thesis working on mRNA display with Rasmus and Baptiste. Welcome, Steffen!
  • Mayeul Collot, group leader at CBST in Strasbourg, came to visit our lab and gave a seminar titled “Conjuring Apollo’s Curse Through Directed Photo-Oxidation”. His work focuses on the development of targeted molecular and nanostructured fluorescent probes for bioimaging applications.
  • January 2025
  • December 2024
  • November 2024
  • The whole group attended the 10th Linderstrøm-Lang Symposium on the 15th November.
  • 2 new members in our group – Baptiste will work on the development of the mRNA display in the context of his Ph.D. project, as part of EMMA. Georgia joined as a Postdoctoral fellow and will work on the protein-based material project. Welcome, guys!
  • October 2024
  • Alex, Federica, Rasmus and Soumik attended the Copenhagen Condensates Colloquium organised by Kresten Lindorff-Larsen at the University of Copenhagen. For the occasion, Rasmus gave a talk on large-scale multiplexed variant screening for protein phase separation.
  • Benedetta Bolognesi, group leader at IBEC Barcelona, came to visit our lab. She works on deep mutational scanning strategies to quantify the effect of thousands of mutations in disordered protein domains.
  • September 2024
  • Celia, Antonin, Jacob, Azad and Soumik took part in the 2nd Leuven Protein Aggregation meeting in Belgium, organised by Frederic Rousseau, Joost Schymkowitz and the Switch Lab. Alex was invited as a speaker to the conference, and gave a talk on the thermodynamic stability of amyloid fibrils.
  • New member – Federica joins our group as a Ph.D. student. She will be working on the assembly behaviour of the low complexity domain of TDP-43 as part of the EMMA project. Welcome, Federica!
  • August 2024
  • New member – Casey joins our group for her Master’s thesis project in collaboration with Novonesis. Welcome, Casey!
  • Francesco Simone Ruggeri, Associate Professor at Wageningen University (WUR) in the Netherlands, visited our lab and gave a seminar on “Unravelling Protein Interactions and Transitions One Molecule at a Time”. He works on the application of infrared nanospectroscopy (AFM-IR) to study amyloids at the single-molecule level and unravel their morphological, mechanical, and chemical-structural properties.
  • We have had a great summer this year. Many new people joined our team. Alex invited the entire lab to his house where we celebrated the newcomers with a great lunch.
  • Hear Alex and Maja talk about how the FIDA1 can be used for phase separation studies and more.
  • New member – Maša joins us as a Ph.D. student. Welcome Maša! She will be working on the seedfood project alongside Lars.
  • Nadia Erkamp from Tuomas Knowles lab (University of Cambridge) visits us for a day. We discussed about the origin of multiphasic architectures within phase separated systems. Thank you, Nadia!
  • July 2024
  • Julia Stark visits us for a Bachelor traineeship. She will be working with Celia on the effects of chaperones on amyloid fibrils.
  • Einar defended his Masters thesis. Congratulations, Einar! His panel member was Vito Foderà from the University of Copenhagen.
  • June 2024
  • Alex, Antonin, and Rasmus attend the IDP GRC conference in Les Diablerets, Switzerland.
  • New member – Rene Rebollo Gonzalez joins our group as an Industrial Ph.D. scholar in collaboration with Novo Nordisk. Welcome, Rene!
  • May 2024
  • Rasmus and Sophie attend the EMBL condensate conference in Heidelberg.
  • April 2024
  • Dorothee Dormann from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz visits us for insightful talks on phase separation. Welcome Dorothee!
  • A fraction of Buell lab. Spring, 2024.
  • Alex attends the Sustainable Protein Forum conference in Montreal, Canada.
  • March 2024
  • Jacob defended his Ph.D. thesis. Congratulations, Dr. Jacob A. Larsen! His panel members were Wei-Feng Sue and Frederic Rousseau.
  • Soumik and Alex write a review on ‘Emerging experimental methods to study the thermodynamics of biomolecular condensate formation‘ in the Journal of Chemical Physics.
  • Sophie received her own postdoctoral funding from the Lundbeck foundation. Her project is ‘Understanding nucleic-acid modulation of protein condensates in neurodegenerative diseases’. Congratulations, Sophie!
  • Daoyuan Qian from Tuomas Knowles lab (University of Cambridge) visits us for a day. Full of insightful discussions on tie-line analyses for phase separated systems! Thank you, Daoyuan!
  • February 2024
  • New member-Cecilia Chiodaroli joins our lab as an Erasmus Masters student. She will be working with Soumik on a-synuclein phase separation. Welcome, Cecilia!
  • Federica defended her Masters thesis. Her external examiner was Birte Kragelund from the University of Copenhagen. Congratulations, Federica!
  • January 2024
  • New member-Einar Halldórsson joins our lab as a Masters student. He will be working with Rasmus on engineering microfluidic devices for phase separation. Welcome, Einar!
  • December 2023
  • Lili defended her Ph.D. thesis. Congratulations, Dr. Lili Zhai! Her doctoral panel had Prof. Daniel Otzen and Prof. Andreas Marx.
  • New member-Sophie Hertel joins our lab as a postdoc on the DNA origami project. Welcome, Sophie!
  • Independent Research Fund Denmark has funded our proposed project in the Green Transition Call. We will be working towards more sustainable production of plant-based materials together with collaborators at ETH Zurich.
  • November 2023
  • New Instrument- Our lab gets a Two MP mass photometer from Refeyn.
  • New Instrument- Our lab gets a VANTAstar and a Fluorostar OMEGA from BMG Labtech. We now have two Fluorostar OMEGA!
  • New Instrument- Our lab gets a FIDA1 with the 640 nm detector. We now have 488, 640 and UV detection, and two FIDA1s!
  • Most of us attend the Linderstrøm Lang symposium where Jacob presents his work.
  • Alex gets funding from DFF for 3 million DKK. We will use this funding to generate energy efficient protein materials. Congratulations, Alex!
  • October 2023
  • Rasmus defended his Ph.D. thesis! Hearty congratulations Dr. Rasmus K. Norrild! His doctoral panel members were Prof. Tuomas Knowles and Prof. Ben Lehner. The picture below is us celebrating Rasmus’s work leading to the development and implementation of TDIPS (https://chemrxiv.org/engage/chemrxiv/article-details/64aff87bae3d1a7b0d9c6c36) for phase separation characterization.
    Fun fact: TDIPS was originally called MOUSTACHE! Therefore, the moustache!
  • New member – Celia joins our lab as a Ph.D. student on the STADIC project. Welcome, Celia!
  • September 2023
  • Soumik joins Prof. Celine Galvagnion Buell’s lab (https://galvagniongroup.org/) as a visiting postdoc to learn cell culture and perform experiments on human SHSY5Y cells for a collaborative project. Best of luck, Soumik!
  • New member-Federica joins our lab as a Masters student. Welcome, Federica! She will work on TDP-16 aggregate stability.
  • New member-Rasmus joins our lab as a postdoctoral fellow. He will be working on the EMMA project. Welcome back, Rasmus!
  • June 2023
  • Alex, Jacob, Hossein and Antonin attend the FASEB conference at Dublin on protein aggregation. Alex gives a talk and Jacobs poster brings a prize! Congratulations, Jacob.
  • May 2023
  • Alex, Soumik and Rasmus attend the Gutenberg workshop: Multivalent Interactions in Aging – Targets for Intervention? Alex gives a talk on our new discoveries and inventions in the field of phase separation. Soumik and Rasmus presents their posters.
  • Our postdoc, Antonin receives his Marie Curie fellowship (Horizon MSCA individual PDF) ! Big congratulations, Antonin!
  • April 2023
Hear Alex’s thoughts on Amyloids
  • February 2023
  • Congratulations Alex on receiving an 2 M Euro European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator grant for his project “Exploring the molecular grammar of IDP assembly and condensation at ultra-high throughput” with the acronym EMMA.
     
    Building on recent years of cutting edge method development, Alex will tackle the final frontier in protein science by developing a fundamentally new approach that will ultimately allow to improve on current in vitro methods of sequence space exploration of intrinsically disordered proteins (IDPs) by more than 8 orders of magnitude.
     
    EMMA is aimed to transform our understanding of the mechanisms and interrelationships of the interactions and assembly processes that define IDP function and disease-related malfunction, opening up new avenues for therapeutic and diagnostic interventions in diseases related to IDP assembly.

    In his words, ‘I am thrilled to have been awarded an ERC consolidator grant to pursue an ambitious basic science project for the next 5 years. I can’t wait to get started with all the cool science we’ll be doing. But on this day of joy, my thoughts go out to those two thirds of interviewed applicants who invested themselves as much as I did and for whom it didn’t work out this time. My message to you is: keep going, your time will come. 4 years ago, my application was rejected, and rightly so. It wasn’t ready. 4 years of hard work, and hard thinking, and it was ready.’
  • November 2022
  • Azad, Antonin and Alex are excited to be in Riga for ADAM9, the Nordic conference on protein aggregation. They use a free afternoon to pay tribute to one of the founders of Physical Chemistry, Wilhelm Ostwald, who was born in Riga and did important work here.
  • Our lab receives a brand new Labbot, the Swiss Army Knife of Protein Characterization. Thank you, Labbot and team!
  • New member– Lars Boyens-Thiele joins our group as a Ph.D. scholar. Welcome, Lars!
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • Our whole SEEDFOOD crew (Alex, Kyu, Wang, Lars) attends the SEEDFOOD kick off meeting at the University of Copenhagen. Two nice days of science and fund. Great to meet everybody who is on board SEEDFOOD.
  • Celina Schulz finishes her short visit and goes back to Düsseldorf University.
  • Abigail Barclay finishes her short visit and goes back to the University of Copenhagen.
  • April 2022
  • Celina Schulz joins our group as visiting PhD student from the Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. Celina works in the group of Prof. Wolfgang Hoyer and explores mechanisms of inhibition of alpha-synuclein amyloid fibril formation by affibodies.
  • Abigail Barclay joins group as a visiting PhD student from the group of Prof. Lise Arleth at the Niels Bohr Institute of the University of Copenhagen.
  • Alex, Kyu and Wang attend the Food Colloid conference in Lund. Fast track into the field of food science that we have entered through the SEEDFOOD project.
  • March 2022
  • Christin Pohl joins the group as a DFF funded postdoc. She will be working at Lund University in the group of our collaborator Sara Linse.
  • Start of our project on improved seed amplification assays for disease diagnostics, funded by the MJFF foundation, and in collaboration with the company Lundbeck.
  • Soumik is awarded a prestigious Marie Curie postdoc grant. Amazing, and well done Soumik. We are very much looking forward to having you around for another two years!
  • February 2022
  • Shuangyan Wang joins the group as postdoc in the SEEDFOOD project, from ETH Zurich. Welcome Wang!
  • Lars joins group as Master’s student in the SEEDFOOD project. Lars has already done a special course with us. Welcome back!
  • January 2022
  • New member-Our first employee of the SEEDFOOD project, Suk Kyu Ko, joins our group. Welcome Kyu!
  • Our first publication of 2022 is online at ACS Nano. Nice collaboration with Hossein Mohammad-Beigi. Hossein was able to perform a detailed characterization of a protein corona on the ability of polymer nanoparticles to facilitate the nucleation of alpha-synuclein amyloid fibrils.
  • December 2021
  • Alexander gives seminars at the Centre for Misfolding Diseases (Cambridge, UK) annual meeting, at DTU Biosustain and at the company Novozymes
  • Our postdoc, Soumik writes a behind the paper commentary on the Capflex paper in Springer Nature protocols and methods community.
  • Our publication presenting our new method to study protein liquid-liquid-phase separation, Capflex, is published in Nature Communications. Congratulations to Emil, Soumik, Rasmus, Jacob and Azad. Great teamwork, and the fist publication with research 100% performed at DTU.
  • Our guest PhD student from Amsterdam, Juami van Gils, leaves again. It was great to have had you around, Juami. All the best!
  • November 2021
  • Most of our group attends the Linderstrøm-Lang Centre Symposium at the University of Copenhagen. It is nice to attend an in person meeting and network with the Danish biophysics community!
  • Our PhD student Rasmus goes on a scientific visit to the group of Prof. Simon Alberti at the University of Dresden. Have fun in one of the leading centers of protein condensate research!
  • October 2021
  • Our PhD students Rasmus and Jacob give a joint presentation at the FIDAbio user meeting in Copenhagen. They talk about our new method, Capflex, which allows detailed and high throughput studies of protein liquid-liquid phase separation.
  • New member – Juami van Gils, a PhD student from Amsterdam joins the group as a guest PhD student for three months. Welcome Juami!
  • Alexander is awarded an Ascending Investigator grant from the Lundbeck Foundation. This will enable us to work for the next 4 years on the role of amyloid fibril thermodynamic stability in neurodegeneration. Big thank you to the Lundbeck Foundation.
  • September 2021
  • New member – Lars Boyens-Thiele joins the group as a project student. Welcome Lars!
  • August 2021
  • New member – Tom Mason joins the lab as a postdoc and he will help us with our various microfluidics-related projects. Welcome Tom!
  • July 2021
  • Our paper on a de novo sequencing workflow of immunoglobulin light chains by mass spectrometry is accepted in Analytical Chemistry! Great collaboration with Julia Chamot-Rooke’s team at the Institut Pasteur in Paris.
  • June 2021
  • New member – Azad Farzadfard joins the lab and he will work on alpha-synuclein amyloid fibril formation. Welcome Azad!
  • The SEEDFOOD project, in which we are co-applicant, is granted by the NNF! 6 years ahead of us in which we can explore the basic biophysics of plant seed storage proteins with the aim to transform them ultimately into something fit for human consumption.
  • April 2021
  • New member – Soumik Ray joins the lab as a postdoc and he will work on massive exploration of the sequence space of protein liquid-liquid phase separation. Welcome Soumik!
  • March 2021
  • Alex gives an online presentation at the LINXS Amyloid workshop – Heart and Mind: linking in vitro science to the clinical context.