Udo Oppermann's Biography

Udo Oppermann, Principal Investigator, University of Oxford

Professor Udo Oppermann obtained a Diploma in Human Biology in 1990 and PhD in Pharmacology and Toxicology in 1994, both with distinctions from Philipps University Marburg, Germany. He went on to become Associate Professor at Karolinska Institutet, Stockholm, in the Department of Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics where he stayed until 2004. After a sabbatical stay at Yale University, he has been a Principal Investigator of the Structural Genomics Consortium (SGC) in Oxford since its inception in 2003. In 2008 he became Professor of Molecular Biology at NDORMS, and he is now Deputy Director of the Institute of Musculoskeletal Sciences, Botnar Research Centre, University of Oxford, as well as a Fellow of St Catherine's College. The research in the Oppermann group focuses on the biology and structure-activity relationships of human metabolic protein families of all types but with emphasis on oxidoreductases such as short - or medium chain dehydrogenases / reductases (SDR, MDR), or oxidative enzymes such as the ketoglutarate dependent oxygenases. The use of chemical biology to understand human biology is a major focus of the group and is currently applied to the field of epigenetic mechanisms in stem cell biology, as well as chronic inflammatory and metabolic diseases.