Tae-Hee Lee Receives Dreyfus New Faculty Award
Tae-Hee Lee, Penn State assistant professor of chemistry, has received a New Faculty Award from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation. The foundation seeks to support the scholarly activity of new faculty in the fields of chemistry, biochemistry, or chemical engineering with an award designed to help initiate their independent research programs. The New Faculty Award provides an unrestricted research grant. According to the foundation, the awards are based on "evidence that the nominee has the potential to produce an independent body of scientific scholarship of outstanding quality and will make significant contributions to overall education in the chemical sciences."
Lee studies the dynamics of molecules involved in several slow and complex enzymatic processes in order to understand the roles of molecules in the processes. He is investigating the implications of specific shapes and sizes of molecules in the precise recognition of substrates by enzymes. Incorrect substrate recognition by an enzyme easily can lead to cell death.
Lee uses single-molecule methods to monitor and study enzymes like the ribosome and tRNA synthetases, which are involved in protein synthesis in cells. Single-molecule methods provide ways to monitor sub-population dynamics of intact enzymes in real time, allowing observation of the whole process of a complex enzymatic reaction in a single measurement. Lee utilizes fluorescence-based single-molecule imaging techniques and optical traps in his research. His goals are to provide novel insights into the link between the mechanisms of complex cellular machineries and the fundamental laws of dynamics.
In 2006, Lee was honored with a National Institutes of Health Pathway to Independence Award. In 2003, he received graduate-student awards from the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Materials Research Society and he won a student paper competition sponsored by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) and Georgia Tech. He has authored or co-authored nearly 20 scientific papers in international, peer-reviewed journals.
Prior to joining Penn State in July 2007, Lee was a postdoctoral researcher from 2004 to 2007 in the Department of Physics at Stanford University. He earned his master's degree in physical chemistry at Sogang University in Seoul, Korea in 1995 and his Ph.D. degree at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2004.
CONTACTS:
Tae-Hee Lee: (+1) 814-865-6553, txl18@psu.edu
Barbara Kennedy (PIO): (+1) 814-863-4682, science@psu.edu