Wulf Blankenfeldt studied chemistry at the Technische Universität Braunschweig and the National Taiwan Normal University before turning to structural biology in his doctoral research at the Gesellschaft für Biotechnologische Forschung in Braunschweig. After his dissertation in 1999, he worked with James H. Naismith at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland before starting his own research group within the Department of Physical Biochemistry of Roger S. Goody at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology in Dortmund in 2002. In 2010, he accepted a position as associate professor of biochemistry at the University of Bayreuth before returning to Braunschweig in 2013. He heads the department Structure and Function of Proteins at the Helmholtz Centre of Infection Research and holds a full professorship in structural biology of proteins at the Technische Universität Braunschweig.
Research in the Blankenfeldt group evolves around bacterial proteins with a focus on the elucidation of molecular mechanisms and protein/small molecule interactions, using structural and biophysical techniques.