Team

Andrea Hupfeld (née Kneuttinger) is a research group leader in Biochemistry at the University of Regensburg. Her group focuses on the engineering of photocontrol in enzymes by using a combined enzymology, chemical biology, and protein engineering approach.

In 2010, she obtained her Master degree in Biochemistry and was awarded with the Jürgen-Manchot prize for characterizing a DNA repair enzyme. Motivated by this interdisciplinary work at the interface of enzymology and organic chemistry, she continued the project in her doctorate with Thomas Carell at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich until 2014.

Driven by the desire to acquire additional professional expertise and life experience outside research, she honed her teaching skills both as a Science teacher in Southampton (England) and a lecturer on Scientific English in Regensburg (Germany), as well as her leadership skills by qualifying as project management specialist. 

In 2016 Andrea resumed her career in research as a PostDoc with Reinhard Sterner at the University of Regensburg, where she achieved to photocontrol enzyme activity and allostery reversibly and with high light-regulation factors by the incorporation of photo-responsive unnatural amino acids.

In 2020 she founded her own research group and she finished her habilitation in June 2025.