Molecular Machines: Single-Molecule Tests of Nanoscale Cellular Functions

Speakers

James A. Spudich, PhD

Stanford University
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James Spudich is professor of biochemistry and developmental biology at Stanford University School of Medicine. He is also cofounder and first director of Bio-X, an interdisciplinary program at Stanford. He is the Douglass M. and Nola Leishman Professor of Cardiovascular Disease, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and cofounder of the Cytokinetics, Inc. The general research interest of his laboratory is the molecular basis of cell motility.

Arne Gennerich, PhD

University of California, San Francisco
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Arne Gennerich is a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Ron Vale at the University of California, Berkeley.

Andrey Revyakin, PhD

University of California, Berkeley
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Andrey Revyakin is a postdoctoral fellow affiliated with the QB3 program at the University of California, Berkeley.

George Oster, PhD

University of California, Berkeley
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George Oster is a professor in the Department of Molecular & Cellular Biology and the College of Natural Resources at the University of California, Berkeley. His research involves construction and testing of theoretical models of molecular, cellular, and developmental processes. Current projects include investigations into the basic physics and chemistry of protein motors, eukaryotic and prokaryotic cell motility, spatial pattern formation in eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells, and membrane geometry and protein organization.

Oster has been awarded numerous honors including election to the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was a MacArthur Foundation Fellow and received the Weldon Memorial Prize from Oxford University. He received his PhD from Columbia University.

Howard Berg, PhD

Harvard University
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Howard Berg is the Herchel Smith Professor of Physics and Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard University. His research group is trying to learn how the motor operating the bacterial flagellum works, the nature of the signal that controls the motor's direction of rotation, and how this signal is processed by the chemical sensory system. Berg received a PhD in physics from Harvard University.

Jan T. Liphardt, PhD

University of California, Berkeley
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Jan Liphardt received a BA degree from Reed College in 1996, and a PhD from Cambridge University in 1999. After two years of postdoctoral work in the Physics and Chemistry Departments of UC Berkeley, he became the divisional fellow of the Physical Biosciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley Lab. He joined the physics faculty at Berkeley in 2004.

Liphardt's lab is developing novel instruments and probes for single molecule research, using nanopores fabricated in silicon nitride membranes to characterize biopolymers, and trying to build biobots, small (~100–300 nm) objects designed to exhibit interesting mechanical and biological properties.

Kathleen M. Wong

Kathleen M. Wong is a biologist and freelance science writer based in Oakland, California.