Boštjan Kobe

Boštjan Kobe received his BSc in chemistry from the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia, and his PhD in biochemistry and biophysics from the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, USA. He then worked as a postdoctoral researcher at St. Vincent’s Institute in Melbourne, Australia, where he established his own laboratory at the end of 1997. In 2000, he moved to the School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. His numerous awards include the 2001 Minister’s Prize for Achievement in Life Sciences, an Australian Research Council Federation Fellowship in 2005, and a Laureate Fellowship in 2018. He also received the 2009 ASBMB (Australian Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology) Roche Medal and the 2018 ASBMB Beckman Coulter Discovery Award. In 2018, he became a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science, and in 2020, a Slovenian Ambassador of Science. He was the President of the Society of Crystallographers in Australia and New Zealand from 2012 to 2014 and is an Editor of Acta Crystallographica Section D Structural Biology. His laboratory’s work focuses on using structural biology to understand infection and immunity.

Research projects: Dr. Kobe’s research interests are in protein structure and function, with the emphasis on understanding the structural basis of intra- and intermolecular interactions formed by these macromolecules. The primary techniques used in the laboratory are cryogenic electron microscopy and X-ray crystallography, combined with a plethora of other molecular biology, biophysical and computational techniques. His current projects focus on proteins involved in innate immunity signalling in humans, plants and bacteria, for example the Toll-like receptors pathways in humans and plant NLRs (nucleotide-binding leucine-rich repeat receptors).