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.
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 Llinás 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.
Amir Sheikhi Associate Professor and Dorothy Foehr Huck and J. Lloyd Huck Early Career Chair in Biomaterials and Regenerative Engineering
Biotechnology and Synthetic Biology; Energy and Environment; Interfaces and Surfaces; Materials and Nanotechnology; Separations and Transport
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.