[3dem] Andreas Engel

Mon Apr 13 21:34:45 PDT 2026

Dear Henning, dear all,

this is sad news indeed.
Andreas has been incredibly pioneering and always supportive in various manners, in cryo-EM developments like the cryoWriter, as chief editor at JSB and lately also as member of the scientific advisory board (SAB) of the French infrastructure for integrated structural biology (FRISBI).
We will miss his inspiring and friendly way of being.

Bruno

From: 3dem <3dem-bounces at ncmir.ucsd.edu> On Behalf Of Ruben Diaz via 3dem
Sent: dimanche 5 avril 2026 21:36
To: 3dem <3dem at ncmir.ucsd.edu>
Subject: Re: [3dem] Andreas Engel

This are really sad news… I met Andreas when I was a graduate student, and had the rare chance to interact quite strongly with him (we crashed during a soccer game at a GRC, and with me being considerably chubbier, we illustrated to everyone else the scattering of an electron with a heavy atom). After that collision, I became his main supplier of TMV for the calibration of the STEM, and the discussions with him led me to try STEM mass per length measurements to discern structural differences in the fibers of different yeast prion strains. I will always remember him as a very cheerful and kind scientist. Rest in peace!

Ruben.

On Sun, Apr 5, 2026 at 1:38 AM Sharon G Wolf via 3dem <3dem at ncmir.ucsd.edu<mailto:3dem at ncmir.ucsd.edu>> wrote:
Henning,
This is indeed sad news. Andreas was a kind and thoughtful person, full of ideas and zest for science. And as JM mentioned, he was at the helm of JSB for years  - I look forward to reading the "in Memoriam".
For me personally it was a joy to discuss STEM imaging with him; he had developed STEM to determine mass of biomacromolecules together with Jacques, Baumeister and others.    He wrote a recent review of these works: https://urldefense.com/v3/__https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1047847722000132?via*3Dihub__;JQ!!Mih3wA!AFzEE0vtn296j1RWeIkLQWbEKi35eosQ5z-e_MjKql7jQL0dED5f1bMjo6EIFHOlUxJ3m7XKx9TQybWV_V3_$ <https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1047847722000132?via*3Dihub__;JQ!!Mih3wA!Ag4Hwi5JRvVB536I8OVnG-z5HS1WgeMbGMq3NdJuZ7eYh8d5zVWxiU6LEq8FE_n2ynXSSR1WstgNFQazSe1xaX7GoXqrQA$>

Thanks to you and JM and Jacques for posting memories and thoughts. I'd like to read more..
Sharon

________________________________
From: 3dem <3dem-bounces at ncmir.ucsd.edu<mailto:3dem-bounces at ncmir.ucsd.edu>> on behalf of Henning Stahlberg via 3dem <3dem at ncmir.ucsd.edu<mailto:3dem at ncmir.ucsd.edu>>
Sent: Sunday, April 05, 2026 00:27
To: 3dem <3dem at ncmir.ucsd.edu<mailto:3dem at ncmir.ucsd.edu>>
Subject: [3dem] Andreas Engel

Caution: External Sender. Do not click on links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender.

Dear colleagues,

With deep sadness I share the news that Andreas Engel passed away last Wednesday, at the age of 82, after a courageous fight against an aggressive caner. Only half a year ago, he was out hiking in the Italian mountains with his wife Barbara, walking 160 km in a single week.

Andreas trained as a physicist in Bern, Switzerland, before heading to John Hopkins University in Baltimore for his postdoctoral work. He then led a research group at the Biozentrum in Basel, and in 1985 took on the role of a group leader in research and development at Ilford Ltd. in Fribourg, Switzerland.

In 1987, he joined forces with his colleague Ueli Aebi to establish the Maurice E. Müller Institute at the Biozentrum of the University of Basel. Together, Ueli and Andreas served as professors for structural biology there for almost a quarter century, leaving a lasting mark on the field of structural biology as we know it today.

Andreas Engel was a true pioneer. He was among the first to apply atomic force microscopy (AFM) with the tip operating under water, and one of the earliest researchers to perform 3D reconstructions using scanning transmission electron microscopy, achieving remarkable high-resolution maps of porin 2D crystals by STEM. He became a leading expert in membrane protein 2D crystallization, and his group played a key role in the determination of the first aquaporin structure, in collaboration with Peter Agre and Yoshinori Fujiyoshi.

As he approached retirement from Basel, Andreas founded the Center for Cellular Imaging and NanoAnalytics (C-CINA) of the University of Basel, which in 2009 operated among others one of the very early Titan Krios instruments. From 2008 also held a professorship at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, followed by a position at TU Delft in the Netherlands in 2013. In 2020, he was among the founding members of CryoWrite, a company in Basel that he led as CEO until recently.

His contributions to science, to the tools of structural biology, and to our understanding of aquaporins, ion channels, and secretion systems are immense. In more than 400 publications, he shared deep expertise, bold and visionary thinking, and an exceptional attention to detail.

Yet with all his fascination for science, people were always more important to him than career or results. He was a kind group leader. He was motivating, a shining role model, yet gentle towards colleagues and the members of his lab. We postdocs were offered last authorship positions on publications when he found that we had made significant contributions to the direction of the project.

Andreas lived a rich and full life outside of the lab. He had a wonderful family, a wide circle of dear friends, played banjo in a jazz band, and was an outstanding skier and spirited hiker. He welcomed colleagues and friends with warmth and understanding. A large number of his former students still love science today and have been able to build fulfilling careers, in no small part thanks to Andreas and his generous support offered to us.

Andreas will be greatly missed.

[Andreas_Engel.jpg]

Henning Stahlberg
Laboratory of Biological Electron Microscopy
Institute of Physics, School of Basic Sciences, EPFL, and
Dep. of Fund. Microbiology, Faculty of Biology and Medicine, UNIL,
Cubotron, BSP421, 1015 Lausanne, Switzerland
lbem.ch<https://urldefense.com/v3/__https:/lbem.ch__;!!Mih3wA!FOsgr_SoCSVA7PLED_28uMbBls3tyOrjwfLMKHkpl59ttdmo0LFOuTFZqKBQF1ou0zzwwXiflll3WxVrKz4qwP7neZIhLq8$>,   +41 21 693 45 07

_______________________________________________
3dem mailing list
3dem at ncmir.ucsd.edu<mailto:3dem at ncmir.ucsd.edu>
https://mail.ncmir.ucsd.edu/mailman/listinfo/3dem 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mail.ncmir.ucsd.edu/pipermail/3dem/attachments/20260414/400ffdd9/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: image001.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 17100 bytes
Desc: image001.jpg
URL: <http://mail.ncmir.ucsd.edu/pipermail/3dem/attachments/20260414/400ffdd9/attachment-0001.jpg>