Kaspar Locher PhD

Kaspar Locher is Associate Professor of Molecular Membrane Biology at the Institute of Molecular Biology and Biophysics at ETH Zurich. Kaspar Locher pursued studies in biochemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich from 1989-1994. He moved on to the laboratory of Prof. J. Rosenbusch at the Biozentrum, University of Basel, where he obtained his Ph.D. in 1998. From 1999 to 2003, he was a post-doctoral researcher in the laboratory of Prof. Douglas Rees at the California Institute of Technology. In 2003, he joined ETH Zurich as Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2008.

His research focus is the structure and function of membrane transport proteins. These ubiquitous proteins facilitate the uptake of nutrients and the extrusion of toxic substances across cell membranes. To understand the transport mechanism, the three-dimensional structures of these proteins are determined at high resolution using X-ray crystallography.