Dr. Bonnie Murphy

Academic Background

Born and raised in Edmonton, Canada, Dr. Bonnie Murphy completed her B.Sc. Joint Honours in Biology and Chemistry at St. Francis Xavier University. She later earned her Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Oxford under the guidance of Prof. Fraser Armstrong, and worked in a bridging postdoctoral position in the same group in 2014. During this time, she used biochemical, electrochemical and spectroscopic tools to better understand the mechanism of redox proteins, especially hydrogenases. In 2016, Bonnie joined the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics as a Postdoctoral Research Associate under the mentorship of Werner Kühlbrandt. There, she carried out structural studies, including of the mitochondrial ATP synthase. In the beginning of 2020, Dr. Murphy started an independent group as a Max Planck Research Group Leader at the MPI of Biophysics in Frankfurt.

Research Interests

The research of her group at the MPI of Biophysics in Frankfurt focuses on uncovering the structure and mechanisms of proteins—particularly those of bioenergetic relevance—using single-particle cryo-EM in combination with biochemical, molecular, and electrochemical techniques. The group also works to bring together techniques from analytical electron microscopy (EM) with those from biological EM, to allow elemental mapping in macromolecular complexes, a major unmet need in the structural biology community.