Our lab’s research is based in the interdisciplinary area between chemistry and biology. We are especially excited about developing tools – so to say with the rational approach of an organic chemist – to study and manipulate biological processes. Very much in the spirit of Richard Feynman, who coined the saying ‘What I cannot create, I cannot understand’ we strive to design and construct artificial biological pathways and devices to unravel the complex world of biology.

Our lab takes a multidisciplinary approach and techniques typically span from chemical synthesis to protein engineering and cell biology. We are especially active in enabling and advancing approaches to expand the genetic code to incorporate non-canonical amino acids beyond the twenty proteinogenic amino acids into proteins and in developing in vivo chemistries that are amenable to physiological conditions, as we are convinced that such a combined approach is ideally suited to address unmet challenges in studying and manipulating biological processes.