Dr Sebastian Maurer-Stroh studied theoretical biochemistry at the University of Vienna and wrote his master’s and Doctor of Philosophy thesis at the Institute of Molecular Pathology. After Federation of European Biochemical Societies and Marie Curie fellowships at the Vlaams Institut voor Biotechnologie -Switch laboratory in Brussels, he has been leading a group of experts in protein sequence analysis as a senior principal investigator in the A*STAR Bioinformatics Institute (BII) since 2007. He was appointed Executive Director of BII in January 2021.
Dr Maurer-Stroh’s protein function analysis skills are supporting A*STAR's efforts at the public-private interface through the Biotransformation Innovation Platform and the Innovations in Food and Chemical Safety programme at Singapore Institute of Food and Biotechnology Innovation, the Pharma Innovation Programme Singapore, the National Precision Medicine programme, and a research programme on predicting the allergenicity potential of proteins also supporting the evaluation of novel foods.
Being able to quickly move from genomes to protein structures through computational analysis and modelling, his team is critically contributing to national and global viral pathogen surveillance - notably with FluSurver used by National Influenza Centres as part of the global World Health Organization surveillance network through the Global Initiative for Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID) and at the national front line, supporting the National Public Health Laboratory at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases. Similar methods can be applied to other viruses and his team critically contributed analyses to recent major virus outbreaks covering H1N1, MERS, H7N9, Ebola, H5N1, Dengue, H5N8/H5N6, Zika, SARS-CoV-2 (hCoV-19) and many more. He has been working closely with GISAID on enabling sharing and real-time analysis of the pandemic coronavirus causing COVID-19.
Research Interests
Sebastian Maurer-Stroh's research interests lies in mapping the uncharted islands in functional protein sequence space. This includes inferring functions for uncharacterized genes/proteins based on remote evolutionary relationships, prediction of the 3-dimensional structure of proteins, identification of biologically important residues and disease-related mutations, as well as developing predictors for short functional motifs in protein sequences.
Group Members
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Research Scientist | LIMVIPHUVADH Vachiranee |
Senior Post-Doctoral Research Fellow | KENANOV Dimitar |
Senior Post-Doctoral Research Fellow | HO Wei-Hao Joses |
Senior Post-Doctoral Research Fellow | MAK Tze Minn Sandy |
Post-Doctoral Research Fellow | CHONG Cheng Shoong Ken |
Research Manager | LEE Tze Chuan Raphael |
Senior Research Officer | XU Yani Angela |
Research Officer | MIYAJIMA Jhoann |
Research Officer | CHEW Yi Hong |
Research Officer | MAKHEJA Meera |