Ilme Schilchting PhD

Ilme Schlichting studied biology and physics at the University of Heidelberg from 1979 to 1987. She earned a Ph.D. in biology there in 1990. Schlichting pursued post-doctoral studies at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research and at Brandeis University in Boston in the United States as a Feodor Lynen Fellow. From 1994 to 2001 she was head of a working group at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund. Since 2002 she is the director of the department for Biomolecular Mechanisms at the Max Planck Institute for Medical Research.

Schlichting has studied the structure and operation of biomolecules using protein crystallography. During her Ph.D., she made important contributions to the understanding of the switch function of the Michaelis complex and hence to the understanding of this enzyme during her doctorate using the Laue method.[1] Recently, Schlichting has been one of the founders of time-resolved protein crystallography at Free-electron lasers.