Professor Erhard Hohenester

Erhard Hohenester is a structural biologist investigating extracellular matrix – the supramolecular scaffolding of animal tissues. His research has advanced our understanding of how matrix proteins and glycans are synthesised, how they are broken down, how they interact with each other and with cells, and how these processes go wrong in human diseases. He studied chemistry in his native Austria and received his PhD in Biophysics from the University of Basel in 1995. He began his independent research career while he was a postdoctoral fellow at Birkbeck, University of London, collaborating with the late Rupert Timpl to determine some of the first crystal structures of matrix proteins. He joined Imperial College London in 1998 as a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow and was promoted to Professor in 2009. He has served the Department of Life Sciences as Deputy Head and Director of Research.