Meiler was born in
Leipzig, East Germany. He attended the
University of Leipzig, where he received a B.S. in
biology in 1995. He then continued onto the
University of Frankfurt receiving a
Ph.D. in
structural biology in 2001, where he was funded by the
German National Merit Foundation scholarship. His doctoral adviser was Christian Griesinger, Director of the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry. Meiler then completed his
post-doctoral work in the same field through the
Human Frontier Science Program at the
University of Washington from 2001 to 2004. His postdoctoral adviser was
David Baker (biochemist), the Henrietta and Aubrey Davis Endowed Professor in Biochemistry,
University of Washington. After completing a postdoctoral fellowship, Meiler served as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Pharmacology, and Biomedical Informatics at
Vanderbilt University. In 2011, he received
tenure and was promoted to Associate Professor. During this time, he received the Vanderbilt Institute for Chemical Biology Prize for Highly Cited Article award (2014). In 2019, Meiler was awarded the
Alexander von Humboldt Professorship from the
Alexander von Humboldt Foundation his research in bioinformatics and protein structures. As part of the award, Meiler collaborated with colleagues at
Leipzig University on the study of
G-protein coupled receptors. He was also named the Stevenson Chair in Chemistry. At Vanderbilt, his lab conducts research on
cheminformatics,
Ligand docking, and
protein design. It is funded by a number of national organizations, including the
National Science Foundation and the
National Institutes of Health. The Meiler Lab at
Vanderbilt University specializes in
computational,
structural, and
chemical biology. Their focus is on
protein-protein interactions,
protein design,
ligand docking, and
cheminformatics. Their findings on small-molecule therapeutics and receptor-binding proteins have been published in
academic journals like
Nature. In recent years, Meiler has also conducted research on
artificial intelligence. His work has been featured in newspapers in both the
United States and
Germany. ==Honors and awards==