Rate My Professor Maria Hrmova

Professor Maria Hrmova is an Emerita Professor in the School of Agriculture, Food and Wine within the College of Science at The University of Adelaide. Her expertise lies in the multidisciplinary field of structural biochemistry and biophysics. Research in her group has resulted in approximately 220 peer-reviewed articles and patents that explain catalytic mechanisms of enzymes in crop plants and the roles of transporters and transcription factors in plant abiotic stress tolerance. These outputs have appeared in journals including Nature Communications, Science, Cell Research, Communications Biology, American Chemical Society, Biotechnology Advances, Current Opinion in Plant Biology, Biochemical Society Transactions, Plant Cell, Plant Physiology, The Plant Journal, Biochemical Journal and Journal of Biological Chemistry. The works have received around 9,000 citations, with 14 papers featured on front covers of academic resources.

Professor Hrmova’s laboratory investigates molecular mechanisms underpinning the function of plant proteins in three major areas: catalytic mechanisms of enzymes involved in plant development, using high-resolution X-ray crystallography, enzyme kinetics, mass spectrometry, NMR spectroscopy and multi-scale 3D molecular modelling; plant transport proteins underlying elemental soil toxicity tolerance, including borate and HKT Na+/K+ transporters and aquaporins; and transcription factors involved in the regulation of plant responses to drought, through 3D molecular modelling studies validated in vitro and in genetically engineered plants. She has held the position of Professor (Research) at The University of Adelaide since 2010. Among her awards and achievements are the Gold Medal of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, the Commemorative Medal of the Institute of Chemistry of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, election as a member of the Learned Society of the Slovak Academy of Sciences, and the title of Professor Emerita at The University of Adelaide. She earned her academic qualifications, including BSc, MSc, PhD and DrSci, from Comenius University in the Slovak Republic.