Surfaces and Energies

Hi!

My name is Lotta and I am a biophysicist interested in biomechanics, self-assembly, dynamics, geometry, ... basically everything that can described with Physics and that is squishy and/or biological! I've been working a lot with biopolymers and now transitioned to droplets made of phase-separating proteins, see my Research page.

About my bio (CV here): I am currently a PostDoc at University of Zurich, Switzerland, and Cornell University, USA. I pursued my undergraduate studies at University of Göttingen and spent a year of my Master's degree at University of California, Santa Barbara (it is a very beautiful place). I finished my PhD with Sarah Köster at University of Göttingen, Germany, in 2021 where we investigated interactions within and between cytoskeletal biopolymers. During my PostDoc, I've been working with and Eric Dufresne (Cornell) and Ben Schuler (UZH). Together, we investigate the molecular and macromolecular structure of phase-separating proteins.

In February 2026, I will start my own independent research group at the Leibniz Institue for Interactive Materials  (DWI Aachen), associated with RWTH Aachen, all about soft and biological materials. If you're interested in what we will be doing in detail, let me know and we can have a chat.

Job openings

We are looking for two PhD students who are excited to work on soft and biological materials! We are searching for enthusiastic individuals from diverse backgrounds. The full job descriptions can be found 

here and 

here.

We'll also be looking for Bachelor's and Master's students, exchange students and PostDocs with their own funding. Contact me in case you're interested.

Contact:

E-Mail: cml353@cornell.edu

Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/charlotta-lorenz-b3b4a180

 OrcID: https://orcid.org/0009-0005-9822-9384

GoogleScholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Xl1KmiwAAAAJ&hl=en