Dorothee Kern, Ph.D.

Background

Doro was the point guard and captain of the German National Basketball Team and is the reigning Masters World Champion.

Dorothee (Doro) Kern is professor of biochemistry at Brandeis University. She currently serves as the director of the graduate program in biophysics and biochemistry and previously as chair of the biochemistry department. Dr. Kern has been an investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute since 2005 and is a member of the National German Academy of Science Leopoldina. She joined the faculty of Brandeis University in 1999.

Dr. Kern’s research group studies the dynamical nature of proteins with the goal of revealing the interplay between structure, dynamics and function. She has been a major contributor in the experimental characterization of protein dynamics during enzyme catalysis and signaling. Recently, Dr. Kern has focused on reconstructing the evolution of proteins over billions of years. She is the recipient of the Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry from the American Chemical Society, the National Lecturer of the Biophysical Society, the Dayhoff Award from the Biophysical Society, the Young Investigator Award of the International Association for Protein Structure Analysis and Proteomics and the Strage Award for Aspiring Young Science Faculty. Before her professional scientific career, she was captain of the German National Basketball team for many years and won an MVP award.

Dr. Kern holds a Ph.D. in biochemistry from the Martin Luther University in Halle, Germany, and completed her postdoctoral research at UC Berkeley with a fellowship from the German National Academic Foundation and BASF.