Lecture: 'Bright Probes for Studying Biological Processes'
About
Olalla Vázquez was born in 1981 in Spain. She graduated in Chemistry from the Universidade de Santiago de Compostela in 2004 (with honors). In 2005 she received a FPU fellowship granted by the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science for PhD studies. During her PhD, she worked on the design and synthesis of new specific binders and fluorescent probes for DNA recognition under the supervision of Professor José Luis Mascareñas and Professor Eugenio Vázquez.
In the course of her predoctoral studies, she made four-month stays as visiting PhD student at Harvard University, in the group of Professor Verdine in 2006 and at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin, in the group of Professor Seitz in 2008. In 2010 she defended her PhD dissertation, obtaining summa cum laude. In 2011 she received the Marie Curie postdoctoral research fellowship and joined the group of Professor Seitz. There, she was exploring the possibilities of using RNA template-directed reactions in order to synthesize cytotoxic peptides in the context of cancer therapy.
In summer 2014 she received a call for a newly established tenure-track Junior-Professorship at Philipps Universität Marburg, where she was entrusted with the mission of managing the newborn division of Chemical Biology together with Professor Meggers. During her career she has published papers in high impact journals (Angewandte Chemie; Chemical Science, etc) as well as received national and international awards during the whole career path, including the European Young Chemist Award, VII Lilly Research Awards on Basic Science for PhD students, Invitation to attend the 63thLindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, dedicated to Chemistry, Fulbright-Cottrell Award 2016, Young Research Award 2017 by DFG, etc.