Roman Jerala

Roman Jerala is head of the Department of synthetic biology and immunology at the National institute of chemistry in Ljubljana, Slovenia. He is a chemist by training, obtained PhD in Ljubljana and a postdoc at the University of Virginia USA on high resolution NMR. Upon return to Slovenia he moved to the National institute of chemistry and worked on diverse topics, including NMR, antimicrobial peptides, prion proteins and settled on synthetic biology and molecular immunology.

His group contributed to the understanding of the molecular mechanisms of innate immunity and is interested in cancer immunotherapy and gene therapy. He works on coiled-coil protein origami for the design of new protein folds, information processing in mammalian cells, translational medicine and other new methods of protein and gene regulation. He is member of the European Molecular Biology Organization (EMBO), member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts and a recipient of the ERC Advanced Grant.