Sebastian Deindl

Sebastian Deindl (born March 16, 1978 in Basel) is a German-Swedish biochemist, molecular biophysicist and structural biologist. In November 2024, Sebastian Deindl was selected for an Alexander von Humboldt professorship.

Education and career Sebastian Deindl studied biochemistry at the University of Tübingen, where he became familiar with structural biology. He completed his degree in 2004 with a diploma. In 2009, he earned his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, under the supervision of John Kuriyan. During this time, his research focused on the biophysical mechanisms of signal transduction and the structure of protein complexes.

After completing his Ph.D., Deindl worked from 2009 to 2014 as a Jane Coffin Childs postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University, where he was part of Xiaowei Zhuang's research group. There, he developed single-molecule techniques and applied them to the study of chromatin dynamics.

In 2014, Deindl assumed an assistant professorship at Uppsala University. He was promoted to associate professor in 2018 and appointed full professor of Molecular Biophysics in 2021. At Uppsala University, he leads a research group in the field of mechanistic chromatin biology, which investigates the complex molecular structures and dynamics of nucleic acid-binding proteins and their collective role in regulating gene expression, particularly in the chromatin context. In 2024, he was selected for an Alexander von Humboldt Professorship, Germany’s most highly endowed research award. In this role, Deindl is expected to take up the Chair of Structural Biology at the Interfaculty Institute of Biochemistry (IFIB) at the University of Tübingen.

Honors and awards

2017: ERC Starting Grant 2019: EMBO Young Investigator Award 2022: ERC Advanced Grant 2024: Alexander von Humboldt professorship

Selected publications