Frauke Melchior

Frauke Melchior is Rector of Heidelberg University (term 2023–2029) and a molecular biologist. She studied chemistry at the University of Marburg and the University of Bristol and completed her doctorate in Marburg in 1990.

She held research positions at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen and at The Scripps Research Institute in the United States, where she contributed to research on SUMO-mediated protein modification, an important mechanism in post-translational regulation. She later led a research group at the Max Planck Institute of Biochemistry, was Professor of Molecular Biology at the University of Göttingen, and joined Heidelberg University in 2008 as Professor at the Center for Molecular Biology (ZMBH). From 2021 to 2023, she served on the Board of Directors of Forschungszentrum Jülich, responsible for life sciences.