Prof. Dr. Jörn Piel

Prof. Dr.  Jörn Piel

Prof. Dr. Jörn Piel

Full Professor at the Department of Biology
Deputy head of Institute of Microbiology

ETH Zürich

Institut für Mikrobiologie

HCI G 431

Vladimir-Prelog-Weg 1-5/10

8093 Zürich

Switzerland

Additional information

Research area

Jörn Piel's research focuses on the origin, ecology, and activity of natural products. Using biological and chemical methods, his research group investigates how organisms such as bacterial communities in marine sponges synthesize these often complex substances. This knowledge is then applied in Synthetic Biology  to produce compounds that are difficult to obtain from Nature. Such natural products are of great interest for the development of drugs used in antiinfective or anticancer therapy.

Jörn Piel is a full professor of Microbial Interactions at the Institute of Microbiology since February 2013.

He was born in Germany, in 1967.

Jörn Piel studied chemistry at the University of Bonn, Germany. From 1995-1998 he conducted his PhD work in Bonn with Prof. W. Boland, studying biosynthesis and regulation of natural products involved in plant signaling. As an Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral fellow (1998-1999) he worked on biosynthetic pathways of marine bacteria in the laboratory of Prof. B. S. Moore and Prof. H. G. Floss at the University of Washington, Seattle. From 1999-2004 he headed a junior research group at the Max Planck Institute of Chemical Ecology, Jena, Germany, and obtained the habilitation at the University of Jena in 2004. In the same year he was appointed a C3 (Assistant) Professor at the Kekulé Institute of Organic Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Bonn, Germany. 2013 he was appointed as a Full Professor at ETH Zurich at the Institute of Microbiology.

Honours

Year Distinction
2023 David Gottlieb Memorial Lecture Award, University of Illinois, USA
2023 Hans-Herloff Inhoffen Medal
2022 ETH Dandelion Award
2022 ETH Spark Award
2020 Elected member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina
2020 Gordon and Betty Moore Investigator Award
2017 ERC Advanced Grant
2004 DECHEMA Young Investigator Award for Natural Product Research
2004 Matt Suffness Award of the American Society of Pharmacognosy
2004 Thuringian Reseach Award
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