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Department of Chemistry

Biological Chemistry

The Penn State Department of Chemistry has a rich history of research in biological chemistry.  Faculty are engaged in cutting edge research in bioinorganic, biophysical, and computational biology. Researchers have a breadth of interests that range from solving structures of biomolecules to elucidating the mechanism of novel enzymes to looking at protein and RNA folding on a genome-wide scale. Research has applications to numerous organisms, biological pathways, and human diseases.

research

 

Faculty

Ganesh Anand Associate Professor of Chemistry

Protein dynamics in cell signaling.

Stephen Benkovic Evan Pugh Professor and Eberly Chair in Chemistry

Cellular metabolism and gene replication.

Philip Bevilacqua Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

RNA chemistry and biology.

Amie Boal Associate Professor of Chemistry and of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Structural Biology and Mechanism of Metalloproteins.

David Boehr Associate Professor of Chemistry

The role of protein structural dynamics in enzyme function and regulation.

J. Martin Bollinger Professor of Chemistry and of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Mechanisms of redox metalloenzymes and metallocofactor assembly.

Squire Booker Evan Pugh University Professor of Chemistry and of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Biochemistry; enzymology; protein chemistry.

Joseph Cotruvo Louis Martarano Career Development Professor of Chemistry

Chemical biology of metal ion and redox homeostasis.

Paul Cremer J. Lloyd Huck Professor of Chemistry and of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Biological interfaces, nanomaterials, spectroscopy, and microfluidics.

Mark Hedglin Assistant Professor of Chemistry

Mechanisms of genome replication.

Christine Keating Professor of Chemistry

Bioinspired materials chemistry. Experimental model systems for membraneless organelles and protocells.

Jonathan Kuo Assistant Professor of Chemistry

Physical Organic, Organometallic, Bioinorganic.

Carsten Krebs Professor of Chemistry and of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Spectroscopic and kinetic studies on the mechanisms of iron-containing enzymes.

Tae-Hee Lee Professor of Chemistry

Single molecule biophysics, biochemistry and enzymology.

Stewart A. Mallory Assistant Professor of Chemistry

Computational, Theoretical, Materials.

William Noid Professor of Chemistry

Theories of statistical mechanics applied to investigate structural biology.

Edward O'Brien Associate Professor of Chemistry and of the Institute for CyberScience

Theory and computation of molecular and cellular processes.

Elvira Sayfutyarova Assistant Professor of Chemistry

Ayusman Sen Verne M. Willaman Professor of Chemistry

Autonomous motion and transport in biological systems.

Scott Showalter Professor of Chemistry and of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Biophysical chemistry, macromolecular structure and dynamics by NMR.

Alexey Silakov Assistant Professor of Chemistry

Metalloezymology and Structural biology.

Ruobo Zhou Assistant Professor of Chemistry

Super-resolution fluorescence imaging, single-molecule detection, spatiotemporal organizations of biomolecules, liquid-liquid phase separation in biology, neurobiology, RNA biology.

 

Courtesy Faculty

Marina Feric Assistant Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology

Fundamental mechanisms underlying the organization of cells

John Golbeck Professor of Biochemistry and Biophysics

Research in photosynthesis.

Manuel Llinas Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Malaria parasite metabolism and biochemistry.

Denise Okafor Assistant Professor of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology

Structural mechanisms of signaling and regulation in protein complexes.

Emily Weinert Associate Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Bacterial oxygen sensing and atypical cyclic nucleotides.

 

Adjunct Faculty

Xin Zhang 

Biochemistry of intracellular protein aggregation in stressed proteome and neurodenegeration.