since 2005 Director of the Institute for Structural Biochemistry (IBI-7), Forschungszentrum Jülich

since 2004 Full Professor for “Physical Biology”, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf

2001–2004 Associate Professor, Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf

1998-2001 Independent junior research group leader, Institut für Molekulare Biotechnologie, Jena

1997 FEBS-Fellowship at the Sackler School of Medicine, Tel-Aviv University, Israel

1995-1998 Assistant Professor, Lehrstuhl für Biopolymere, University of Bayreuth

1998 Habilitation in Biophysical Chemistry

1994-1995 Post-doctoral Fellow, Lehrstuhl für Biopolymere, University of Bayreuth

1991–1994 Doctoral student in the group of Prof. Dr. Paul Rösch (University of Bayreuth)

1989 Diploma in Biochemistry, University of Bayreuth

1982–1989 Student of Biochemistry, University of Tübingen, University of Bayreuth, University of Colorado at Boulder (CO, USA)

Research fields

• Structural biology of biologically relevant proteins, NMR, X-ray and cryo-EM
• Structure of amyloid proteins in their various confomations
• Structure and function of viral proteins and their host cell target protein
• Drug development by phage display and mirror image phage display
• Pre-clinical and clinical development of all-D-peptides

Selected activities in the scientific community, honors, awards

Since 2012 Speaker of the graduate research school iGRASPseed at HHU

2012 Award of the Klaus-Felgenhauer-Stiftung for the minisymposium „Diagnostic approaches in neurodegenerative dementia“

Since 2008 Member of the board of directors of the BMFZ (Biologisch-Medizinisches Forschungszentrum) of the Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf

2008-2015 Speaker of the graduate research school BioStruct at HHU

Since 2007 Founder and Speaker of the biomolecular NMR Network NRW (“bioN3MR”)

2000 Gerhard-Hess-Award of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft

Publications, book chapters, editorial

>300 peer-reviewed publications

Total H-index: 44

10 most important Publications

1. Dick M, Hartmann R, Weiergräber OH, Bisterfeld C, Classen T, Schwarten M, Neudecker P, Willbold D, Pietruszka J. Mechanism-based inhibition of an aldolase at high concentrations of its natural substrate acetaldehyde: structural insights and protective strategies. Chem. Sci. 7, 4492-4502 (2016).

2. Dammers C, Schwarten M, Buell A, Willbold D. Pyroglutamate-modified Aβ(3-42) affects aggregation kinetics of Aβ(1-42) by accelerating primary and secondary pathways. Chem. Science, 8, 4996-5004 (2017).

3. Gremer L, Schölzel D, Schenk C, Reinartz E, Labahn J, Ravelli R, Tusche M, Lopez-Iglesias C, Hoyer W, Heise H, Willbold D, Schröder GF. Fibril structure of amyloid-β(1-42) by cryo-electron microscopy. Science 358, 116-119 (2017).

4. Schulte M, Petrovic D, Neudecker P, Hartmann R, Pietruszka J, Willbold S, Willbold D, Panwalkar V. Conformational Sampling of the Intrinsically Disordered C-terminal Tail of DERA is Important for Enzyme Catalysis. ACS Catalysis 8, 3971-3984 (2018).

5. Perov S, Lidor O, Salinas N, Golan N, Tayeb-Fligelman E, Deshmukh M, Willbold D, Landau M. Structural Insights into Curli CsgA Cross-β Fibril Architecture Inspire Repurposing of Anti-amyloid Compounds as Anti-biofilm Agents. PLoS Pathog. 15, e1007978 (2019).

6. Schemmert S, Schartmann E, Zafiu C, Kass B, Hartwig S, Lehr S, Bannach O, Langen KJ, Shah NJ, Kutzsche J, Willuweit A, Willbold D. Aβ Oligomer Elimination Restores Cognition in Transgenic Alzheimer's Mice with Full-blown Pathology. Mol. Neurobiol. 56, 2211-2223 (2019).

7. Kutzsche J, Jürgens D, Willuweit A, Adermann K, Fuchs C, Simons S, Windisch M, Hümpel M, Rossberg W, Wolzt M, Willbold D. Safety and pharmacokinetics of the orally available antiprionic compound PRI-002: A single and multiple ascending dose phase I study. Alzheimers Dement (N Y) 6, e12001 (2020).

8. Röder C, Kupreichyk T, Gremer L, Schäfer LU, Pothula KR, Ravelli RBG, Willbold D, Hoyer W, Schröder GF. Cryo-EM structure of islet amyloid polypeptide fibrils reveals similarities with amyloid-β fibrils. Nat. Struct. Mol. Biol. 27, 660-667 (2020).

9. König AS, Rösener NS, Gremer L, Tusche M, Flender D, Reinartz E, Hoyer W, Neudecker P, Willbold D, Heise H. Structural details of amyloid β oligomers in complex with human prion protein as revealed by solid-state MAS NMR spectroscopy. J. Biol. Chem. 296, 100499 (2021).

10. Willbold D, Strodel B, Schröder G, Hoyer W, Heise H. Amyloid-type protein aggregation and prion-like properties of amyloids. Chem. Rev. 121, 8285-8307 (2021).