Thorsten Wohland's Biography

Thorsten Wohland, Associate Professor, National University of Singapore

Thorsten Wohland studied Physics at the Technical University of Darmstadt and the University of Heidelberg in Germany from 1989-1995. He completed his diploma thesis in Physics at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Heidelberg, Germany, where he worked on the influence of light polarization on the forces in optical tweezers under the supervision of Prof. Ernst H.K. Stelzer. In 1996 he completed his national service at the National Research Institute for Environment and Health (GSF) in Munich, Germany, where he worked on single photon emission computer tomography (SPECT) with Dr. Wolfgang Kreyling. In 1997 he joined the research group of Prof. Horst Vogel at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (ETHL/EPFL), Switzerland. In the year 2000 he obtained his doctoral degree in the field of Biophysics for the study of theoretical and practical aspects of fluorescence correlation spectroscopy (FCS) and its application to integral membrane proteins. Following another two years in the group of Richard N. Zare at Stanford in the USA working on single molecule detection and protein immobilization he started as Assistant Professor at the NUS in June 2002. In June 2008 he was promoted to Associate Professor. Since 2012 he is Associate Director for the Center for Bioimaging Sciences and since 2014 Assistant Dean for Research and Graduate Studies at the Faculty of Science, NUS. He was recently awarded an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship and the Outstanding Scientist Award of the faculty of science at NUS. His interests are in application and development of fluorescence spectroscopy techniques and the quantitative investigation of protein function and interaction in living systems.