Professor David Baker (University of Washington) gave the Winter 2018 UCLA Chemistry & Biochemistry Distinguished Lecture on Friday, February 9th.
Over 350 faculty, students, and researchers attended Baker’s lecture titled “The Coming of Age of de novo Protein Design” at the UCLA California NanoSystems Institute (CNSI). Photos from the event can be viewed below. A video of his lecture can be viewed here.
A biochemist and computational biologist, Baker holds the Henrietta and Aubrey Davis Endowed Professorship in Biochemistry at the University of Washington. He is also Director of the Institute for Protein Design and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. Baker’s research focuses on the prediction and design of macromolecular structures and functions. He is the director of the Rosetta Commons, a consortium of labs and researchers that develop the Rosetta biomolecular structure prediction and design program, which has been extended to the distributed computing project Rosetta@Home and the online computer game Foldit.
At the lecture, Department Chair Professor Catherine Clarke gave the welcoming remarks and Baker was introduced by Professor David Eisenberg. After his lecture Baker was presented with an engraved crystal plaque by Clarke. Baker’s daughter, Amanda Baker, a cognitive neuroscience Ph.D. student in the UCLA Department of Psychology, attended the lecture and reception.
Prof. David Eisenberg (left) introduced Baker (right).
Over 300 faculty, students, and researchers attended Baker’s lecture at the California NanoSystems Institute.
(Left) Department Chair Prof. Catherine Clarke presented Baker with an engraved crystal plaque. (Right) Baker’s daughter, Amanda Baker, a cognitive neuroscience Ph.D. student in the UCLA Department of Psychology, attended the lecture and reception.
At the reception following the lecture – Profs. Lin Jiang (Neurology), Ken Houk, Todd Yeates, Baker, David Eisenberg, and Tamir Gonen (Biological Chemistry).
Baker (center) with Profs. Ken Houk (left) and David Eisenberg (right).
A group of chemistry & biochemistry postdocs and graduate students took Baker to lunch at the Faculty Center. In front of Young Hall are Dr. Kevin Murray, Dr. Marc Garcia Borras, Yuxi Lui, Prof. David Baker, Dr. Duyoung Min, Dr. Jacob Sanders, and Song Yang.
About The Distinguished Lecture Series
The UCLA Chemistry & Biochemistry Distinguished Lecture Series is a department-wide colloquium in a special week once per quarter when there are no other seminars in our department. Since beginning the series in 2013, we have invited some of the world’s most accomplished and engaging scientists to speak – Frances Arnold (Caltech), Barry Honig (Columbia), Nobel Laureate Roger Kornberg (Stanford), Harry Gray (Caltech), Francois Diederich (ETH Zurich), Yi Lu (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), Sharon Hammes-Schiffer (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign), JoAnne Stubbe (MIT), Douglas Rees (Caltech), Kimberly Prather (UCSD, Scripps), Jacqueline Barton (Caltech), Nobel Laureate Thomas Cech (University of Colorado, Boulder), and David Baker (University of Washington). Their lectures have consistently encouraged thought-provoking conversations and ideas.
The Spring 2018 Distinguished Lecture by Victoria Orphan, James Irvine Professor of Environmental Science and Geobiology at the California Institute of Technology, will take place on Friday, April 20, 2018, at 5:00 p.m. in the Young Hall CS50 lecture hall followed by a reception on the patio at 6:00 p.m.
The lectures are open to the public. While the research covered in the lectures is meant to appeal to a broad range of chemists and biochemists, the lectures also include a general introduction to the research for those who are further separated in research expertise. For more information, visit the Distinguished Lecture series website.
Photos by Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.
