Maya Topf PhD

Prof. Dr. Maya Topf got her Ph.D. degree at the University of Oxford in 2002 where she used hybrid QM/MM and classical molecular dynamics simulations to study serine protease deacetylation. She then moved to the University of San Francisco to join Andrej Sali’s lab (don’t miss their last paper on IMP also highlighted in this newsletter!) where she successfully combined cryo-electron microscopy data and comparative modeling to model macromolecular structures at an atomic resolution.

Later on, Maya came back to the UK at the Institute of Structural and Molecular Biology and Birkbeck, where she could further work at the interface between bioinformatics and cryo-electron microscopy. Over the last years, the Topf group developed numerous methods to integrate experimental data into the modeling process of macromolecular assemblies, focusing on 3D-EM and mass spectrometry data.