How to Build a Better Protein: Advances in Biomolecular Engineering

Speakers

Michael H. Hecht, PhD

Princeton University
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Michael Hecht is a professor in the Department of Chemistry at Princeton University. He is currently director of Undergraduate Studies and associate department chair. Hecht received his PhD from MIT in the lab of Bob Sauer. After receiving his PhD, he did postdoctoral work at Duke University with David and Jane Richardson. In 1990, he moved to Princeton University as an assistant professor. His awards include the Protein Society's Kaiser Award, and the Beckman Young Investigator Award. He was also awarded the Whitaker Foundation Young Investigator Fellowship and was a National Science Foundation Graduate Fellow.

Hecht is on the editorial advisory board of the journals Protein Science and Protein Engineering, Design & Selection. His research interests include protein folding and stability, de novo protein design, combinatorial methods for constructing protein libraries, protein misfolding, and the role of amyloid in Alzheimer's disease.

Virginia W. Cornish, PhD

Columbia University
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Virginia Cornish is a professor in the Department of Chemistry at Columbia University. She did her graduate work in the laboratory of Pete Schultz in the Chemistry Department at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1996, she became a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in the Biology Department at MIT under the guidance of Bob Sauer.

Cornish joined the Columbia faculty in 1999. Her laboratory is using a combination of synthetic chemistry and molecular genetics to develop a cell-based assay for screening large collections of compounds simultaneously based on function. She is the recipient of a Beckman Young Investigator Award, a Burroughs-Wellcome Fund New Investigator Award in the Toxological Sciences, a Camille and Henry Dreyfus New Faculty Award, and a National Science Foundation Career Award.

Ronald T. Raines, PhD

University of Wisconsin, Madison
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Ronald Raines is the Henry Lardy Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He is also a member of the Department of Chemistry. Raines received his PhD from Harvard University. He has received numerous awards including the the Protein Society's Kaiser Award, The American Chemical Society's Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award and the Vilas Associates Award in the Biological Sciences Division from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Raines has also received many fellowships including the Guggenheim Fellowship and an AAAS fellowship. His laboratory is interested in chemical biology, protein design and engineering, and enzymology.

Richard A. Gross, PhD

Polytechnic University
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Richard Gross is the Herman F. Mark Professor of Polymer Science in the Department of Chemical and Biological Sciences and director of the NSF Center for Biocatalysis and Bioprocessing of Macromolecules at Polytechnic University. Gross received a Presidental Green Chemistry Award in 2003.

Research in the Gross laboratory encompasses a wide variety of projects directed toward development of new enzyme and chemo-enzymatic strategies and methods for the synthesis of polymers for a wide variety of applications. Gross received his PhD in organic-polymer chemistry from the university in 1986.

K. Dane Wittrup, PhD

Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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Dane Wittrup is the Joseph R. Mares Professor of Chemical Engineering & Bioengineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Previous appointments have included J.W. Westwater Professor of Chemical Engineering, Biophysics, and Bioengineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He was also a postdoctoral research associate of the Yeast Molecular Biology Group at Amgen, Inc.

Wittrup has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors including the Fellow of the American Institute of Biomedical Engineers, and the Allan P. Colburn Award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineering. His research interests include molecular bioengineering, protein engineering, and therapeutic protein biotechnology.

Wittrup received his PhD from the California Institute of Technology in 1988.

Vito G. DelVecchio, PhD

Vital Probes Inc.
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Vito DelVecchio is the founder and chief executive officer of Vital Probes, Inc. DelVecchio earned an MS in genetics from Saint John's University and a PhD in biochemical genetics from Hahneman Medical College. He conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Geneva. At the Carnegie-Mellon Research Institute in Pittsburgh he was project director of Fungal Genetics. DelVecchio was also a resident researcher at the Department of Epidemiology and Bacteriology at Brooks Air Force Base in San Antonio. Before founding Vital Probes, Inc. in 2000, he established the Institute of Molecular Biology and Medicine at the University of Scranton.

DelVecchio's research involves the study, rapid diagnosis, and detection of a wide range of microorganisms, especially those that can be used as biological warfare agents. In 2001 he organized and headed an international team of scientists which completely sequenced and annotated the genome of Brucella melitensis, a highly virulent biological warfare agent and pathogen to humans and commercial livestock.

Stephen Mayo, PhD

California Institute of Technology
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Steve Mayo is a professor of biology and chemistry at the California Institute of Technology and an investigator in the Structural Biology section at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He received a BS degree in chemistry from the Pennsylvania State University, where he developed an interactive macromolecular modeling program with Roy Olofson and a PhD degree in chemistry from the California Institute of Technology, where he studied biological electron transfer with Harry Gray. Mayo developed a rule based molecular mechanics force field as a Miller Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley and studied hydrogen/deuterium exchange reactions in proteins as a postdoctoral fellow with Robert Baldwin at Stanford University School of Medicine.

In addition to cofounding Molecular Simulations, Inc. (currently Accelrys), Mayo cofounded Xencor in 1997 and serves on its scientific advisory board. In 2004 Mayo was elected to the National Academy of Sciences for his pioneering contributions in the field of protein design.

Megan Stephan

Megan Stephan studied transporters and ion channels at Yale University for nearly two decades before giving up the pipettor for the pen. She specializes in covering research at the interface between biology, chemistry and physics. Her work has appeared in The Scientist and Yale Medicine. Stephan holds a PhD in biology from Boston University.