On November 9, 2026, the University Council appointed Dr. Bonnie Murphy as Professor of Mechanistic Structural Biology at the Biozentrum, University of Basel. She will take up her position on August 1, 2027.
Since 2020, Bonnie Murphy has led an independent research group at the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics in Frankfurt am Main. Before that, she conducted research at the University of Oxford and the Max Planck Institute of Biophysics, where she specialized in structural investigation of membrane proteins using cryo-electron microscopy. She received her D.Phil. in chemistry from the University of Oxford in 2013 and earned her bachelor's degree in biology and chemistry from St. Francis Xavier University in Canada.
Murphy's research investigates the structural and molecular basis of biological reactions involving electron transfer. A particular focus is on microbial metabolic processes that play a role in shaping our climate, including CO₂ fixation, sulfur cycling and methane production. She also studies redox systems associated with human health and disease. Using cryo-electron microscopy, her research group visualizes protein complexes in different reaction states, enabling them to investigate how these complexes function at the atomic level. In addition, she develops new methods to allow researchers to get a fuller picture of how different species like ions and lipids, bound to biological complexes, affect their atomic structure and function.
Murphy has received several awards for her research. These include the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize (2023) and the Clara Immerwahr Award (2025). In 2023, she also received an ERC Starting Grant from the European Research Council and was selected as an EMBO Young Investigator.
Contact: Communications