Single particle cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM) has excelled in resolving the structure of biological macromolecules such as proteins. In this project, we look at several geometric aspects of the reconstruction workflow: estimating the orientations of the 2D projection images, modelling the 3D deformations of the macromolecule and docking a molecular model to the retrieved 3D volume. In particular, we are interested in using the manifold structure underlying these problems in order to obtain superior algorithms across the reconstruction pipeline.

Joint work with Jan Lellmann (University of Lübeck)