Ljiljana obtained International Baccalaureate  from United World College of the Adriatic (Italy), studied chemistry at the University of Zagreb and then went on to explore advanced biospectroscopy (PhD at the Universtiy of Strathclyde, Glasgow) and DNA structuring and artificial enzyme desing (postdoc at Technical University of Dortmund). She was a group leader at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany for 7 years before joining Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology in 2015. She is a Reader in BioNano Engineering and teaches Bionanotechnology, Chemical Product Design and Engineering Ethics. Her group explores nature-inspired photocatalysts for sustainable manufacturing, bio-nano hybrid materials for DNA vaccine design and drug nanocarriers and imaging probes for pancreatic cancer (TEDx talk here) and cancer-related senescent cells. 

 In her spare time, on the issue of turning the molecules into chocolates (Molecular Chocolates) and failed experiments into artistic installations (ExoEvolution)  

More details on fruk-lab.com

Selected Publications

Bionanotechnology: Concepts and Applications, Cambridge Univeristy Press 2021 (textbook)

Molecular Aesthetics, ed. Peter Weibel and Ljiljana Fruk, MIT Press 2013

Selected papers:

C.O. Franck, L. Fanslau, A.Bistrovic-Popov, P. Tyagi, Lj. Fruk, Biopolymer-Based Carriers for DNA Vaccine Design, Angew. Chem. 2021, 60, 2.

E.Gonzalez-Gualda, M. Paez-Ribes, B. Lozano-Torres et al, Galacto-conjugation of Navitoclax as an efficient strategy to increase senolytic specificity and reduce platelet toxicity, Aging Cell 2020, 19 (4), e13142.

L.Crocker, P. Koehler, P. Bernhard, A. Kerbs, T. Euser, L. Fruk, Enzyme-inspired Flavin-polydopamine as a Biocompatible Nanoparticle Photocatalysts, Nanoscale Horiz. 2019, 4, 1318.

A.Kerbs, P. Mueller, M. Kaupp, I. Ahmed, A. S. Quick, D. Abt, M. Wegener, C. M. Niemeyer, C. Barner-Kowollik, Lj. Fruk, Photo‐Induced Click Chemistry for DNA Surface Structuring via Direct Laser Writing, Chemistry-A Eur. J. 2017, 21, 4990

L. Stolzer, A. Vigovskaya, C. Barner-Kowollik, Lj. Fruk, A Self Reporting Tetrazole Based Linker for the Biofunctionalization of Gold Nanorods, Chemistry-A Eur. J. 2015, 21,1430.

C. Garcia-Astrain, C. Chen, M. Buron, T. Palomares, A. Eceiza, Lj. Fruk, M. Angeles Corcuera, N. Gabilondo, Biocompatible Hydrogel Nanocomposite with Covalently Embedded Silver Nanoparticles, Biomacromolecules 2015, 16(4), 1301.

C-Y.Hung, W-T Tu, Y-Tzu Lin, Lj. Fruk, Y-C. Hung, Optically controlled multiple switching operations of DNA biopolymer devices, J. Appl. Phys. 2015, 118, 235503

Molecules that Changed the World app (iTunes,GooglePlay, Web)

Exhibitions:

Molecules that Changed the World, (ZKM Karlsruhe, Germany, Technical Museum Zagreb, Croatia, University of Cambridge, Uk, 2013-2017)

ExoEvolution: Future is Here, ZKM Germany 2015-2016