Advances in Biomembranes and Lipid Self-Assembly

Aleš Iglic received his B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in physics and M.Sc. degree in biophysics from the Department of Physics, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, all from the University of Ljubljana. He is a Full Professor and the Head of Laboratory of Biophysics of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at University of Ljubljana. His main research interests are in electrostatics, mechanics and statistical physics of lipid nanostructures and biological membranes. He is devoted to higher education, basic research in biophysics and close contacts to clinical practice. Prof. Iglic was visiting scientist and professor at Åbo Academy University in Turku (Finland), Friedrich Schiller University in Jena (Germany) and Czech Technical University in Prague (Czech Republic). He established collaborations with researchers from different universities across the Europe, USA and India and was supervisor of many M.Sc., Ph.D. and postdoctoral students from Slovenia, Czech Republic, Poland, Iran, Bulgaria, Germany, India and Israel. Since 2009 is the editor of Elsevier book series »Advances in Planar Lipid Bilayers and Liposomes« (APLBL). Michael Rappolt has been appointed as Professor of Lipid Biophysics (School of Food Science and Nutrition) in April 2013. He received his MSc and PhD in physics from the University of Hamburg and achieved his habilitation at the University of Ljubljana in the Faculty of Health Sciences. He was Senior Researcher at the Synchrotron Trieste Outstation (Italy), Institute of Biophysics and Nanosystems Research (Austrian Academy of Sciences), before becoming Assistant Professor at Graz University of Technology. Professor Michael Rappolt is a leading authority on investigating the structure and dynamics of lipid membranes using small-angle X-ray scattering. His recent research activities have concentrated on the study of drug/membrane interactions with potential applications to drug delivery and food. Further research topics concentrate on characterising crystallization processes in food, the investigation of colloid interfaces and the determination of particle structures on the nanoscale. He also seeks to transfer standard measurement techniques applied in food research – such as mechanic (sound and shear) and thermodynamic sample manipulations to synchrotron sites – to understand food on a smaller (nanometre) and faster (microsecond) scale. Ana Garcia-Saez gained her PhD at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Valencia, Spain in 2005, and then worked as a Post-doc at BioTec, TU Dresden, Germany. From 2013, she was a professor at the Interfaculty Institute for Biochemistry (IFIB), Universität Tübingen, Germany before moving to University of Cologne as a professor in October 2019. Since 2010, Ana was also the Max Planck Research Group’s Leader and the Deutsches Krebsforschungzentrum (DKFZ) Junior Group’s Leader at Bioquant, Heidelberg, Germany, from 2010 to 2013, and has been a Young Investigator as part of the EMBO Young Investigator Programme since 2017. Ana Garcia-Saez’s research areas include Cell Death & Biophysics, Molecular and Cellular Biology, and Biochemistry & Advanced Microscopy. Though she is also involved in and takes an active interest in Membrane organization, apoptosis regulation, Bcl-2 proteins, membrane dynamics, biophysics, and single molecule techniques. She has received numerous fellowships and awards, including the European Research Council (ERC) Starting Grant, the Max-Planck Gesellschaft Postdoctoral scholarship, and the Marie Curie Intra European fellowship, among others, and has been widely published in the field of membrane biochemistry.

1. Impact of membrane curvature on orientational ordering of curved rod-like membrane proteins
Luka Mesarec, Samo Kralj, Wojciech Gozdz, Veronika Kralj-Iglic and Aleš Iglic
2. Numerical studies of triangulated vesicles with anisotropic membrane inclusions
Mitja Drab, Yoav Ravid, Nir Gov, Samo Penic, Aleš Iglic and Veronika Kralj-Iglic
3. Complex soft matter configurations hosting nanoparticles and topological defects
Luka Mesarec, Samo Kralj, Veronika Kralj-Iglic and Aleš Iglic
4. Estimating stored curvature elastic energy in biological membranes in vivo and in vitro
Marcus Dymond