Adélaïde Raguin

Dr. Adélaïde Raguin leads the Computational and Theoretical Biophysics research group within the Institute for Computational Cell Biology at Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf's Department of Computer Science. She established her independent third-party funded research team in 2021 after postdoctoral work at University of Aberdeen and Heinrich Heine University. Her group develops advanced stochastic simulation methods to investigate mesoscopic biological systems with emphasis on plant polysaccharides, protein synthesis regulation, and cytoskeletal transport.

Her primary research interests focus on the dynamics of complex biological polymers, particularly plant cell wall biosynthesis/degradation, starch biogenesis, glycogen granule formation, and protein synthesis regulation. Using computational biophysics approaches, her team bridges theoretical modeling with experimental validation to understand how molecular structure interplays with enzymatic processes in systems like lignocellulose saccharification and starch granule formation. Key methodologies include stochastic simulations of collective transport processes and development of predictive tools for biological systems.

The group's publication trends reveal strong focus on plant biomass conversion (40% of recent work), macromolecular dynamics (30%), and translation regulation (20%), with increasing emphasis on software tool development for experimentalists. Recent outputs include the PREDIG web application for saccharification prediction and ExpressInHost for codon optimization.

Dr. Raguin actively supervises multiple PhD and Master's students while leading the Stochastic Models of Biological Systems module in the Computer Science Master's program. Her research is supported by major grants from CEPLAS, BioSC, DFG, and BMBF, including the OptiCellu project for sustainable cellulose fiber production and EtransColi for bacterial stress response studies.

Her laboratory maintains strong collaborations with experimental groups through the CEPLAS Cluster of Excellence and develops open-source software tools including:

• ExpressInHost: Codon tuning for recombinant protein expression
• PREDIG: Web application for plant biomass saccharification modeling
• Glycogen granule biogenesis simulation tools
• Whole-translatome protein production models