On May 25, JoAnne Stubbe (Novartis Professor of Chemistry & Biology, MIT) presented the Spring 2016 UCLA Chemistry & Biochemistry Distinguished Lecture.
Prof. Stubbe‘s lecture, titled “Radicals: Your Life is in their Hands”, was held at the UCLA California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI) auditorium. A reception followed her lecture.
Stubbe earned a bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 1968 from the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 1971 from the University of California at Berkeley. Stubbe spent the next year as a postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Julius Rebek, Jr. at the UCLA Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Dr. Stubbe moved to Williams College in 1972 as an assistant professor in the Chemistry Department. After a leave of absence from Williams to conduct research at Brandeis University, she joined the faculty in the Pharmacology Department at Yale University.
In 1980 she moved to the Biochemistry Department at the University of Wisconsin in Madison where she received tenure in 1985. When Stubbe was newly hired at the University of Wisconsin, UCLA Professor of Biochemistry Sabeeha Merchant, then a 1st year graduate student doing a rotation in the Stubbe group, helped to set up her lab.
In 1987 Dr. Stubbe became the first female tenure professor in the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Chemistry Department and is currently the Novartis Professor of Chemistry and Biology. She received the National Medal of Science in 2009 for her ground-breaking research in biochemistry and enzyme mechanism.
Stubbe’s lecture was followed by a lively question and anwer period. Prof. Sabeeha Merchant (with microphone) was a rotation in Stubbe’s lab when she was a 1st year Ph.D. student at the University of Wisconsin Madison.
Faculty with Stubbe at the reception following the lecture (from left) co-hosts Merchant and Prof. Ken Houk. Profs. Todd Yeates and Sri Kosuri.
(From left) Prof. James Liao, Merchant and Prof. Michael Jung. Undergraduate research student Liya Oster and graduate student Rich Sportsman with Stubbe.
(From left) Profs. Carla Koehler, Joe Loo and Merchant with Stubbe. Stubbe having fun with her photo displayed on the monitor in the CNSI lobby.
Photos by Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.
