Scientific Advisory Board
Gerald Joyce, MD, PhD, Dean of Faculty; Professor of Chemistry and Molecular Biology, Scripps
Gerald Joyce is one of the foremost experts in directed molecular evolution. He also has a longstanding interest in the origins of life and the role of RNA in the early history of life on Earth. Dr. Joyce received his MD and PhD from the University of California, San Diego in 1984 before joining the faculty of The Scripps Research Institute in 1989. Dr. Joyce is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Blake Simmons, PhD, VP of Deconstruction; Joint BioEnergy Institute
Blake is the Vice-President of the Deconstruction Division at the DOE's Joint BioEnergy Institute, where he leads a team of 35 researchers working on advanced methods of liberating fermentable sugars from lignocellulosic biomass. He is one of the principal co-investigators of JBEI, a $135M DOE funded project tasked with the development and realization of next-generation biofuels produced from non-food crops. Blake also manages the Biomass Science and Conversion Technology Department at Sandia. He has over 70 publications, book chapters, and patents.
Richard Mathies, PhD, Dean of Chemistry; Professor of Chemistry, UC Berkeley
Richard A. Mathies, a member of the chemistry faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, since 1976, was appointed in 2008 as the Dean of the College of Chemistry and the Gilbert Newton Lewis Professor. Mathies earned his MS (1970) and his PhD (1974) at Cornell under Andreas C. Albrecht, and worked under Lubert Stryer as a post doctoral fellow at Yale. His research focuses both on ultrafast resonance Raman spectroscopy of photoactive proteins and on lab-on-a-chip devices for high performance biomolecule and cell analysis.
Mathies serves on the scientific advisory board of Affymetrix, a company co-founded in 1993 by Stephen Fodor, who did his postdoctoral research with the Mathies group. Mathies is author of over 380 publications and 35 patents on photochemistry, photobiology, bioanalytical chemistry and genome analysis technology.
Brian Paegel, PhD, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Scripps, Florida
Brian Paegel studies chemistry and biology in the confines of rationally designed and assembled microscopic compartments. His group exploits microfluidic technology to systematize the preparation of microdroplets for directed evolution studies. Prof. Paegel has a BS in chemistry from Duke, a PhD in chemistry from UC Berkeley, was a post-doctoral fellow in the Joyce lab at TSRI, and was an original co-founder of Allopartis, helping to develop IP for its platform technology.
Zev Gartner, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, UCSF
Zev Gartner received his BS in chemistry from UC Berkeley and performed his doctoral work at Harvard University in the lab of Professor David Liu, developing DNA-templated methods for molecular synthesis. He later returned to Berkeley for a post-doctoral fellow with Carolyn Bertozzi and is now a faculty member at UCSF. Zev's research uses synthetic chemistry modifications to cell surfaces to drive assembly of microtissues.
Gerald Joyce is one of the foremost experts in directed molecular evolution. He also has a longstanding interest in the origins of life and the role of RNA in the early history of life on Earth. Dr. Joyce received his MD and PhD from the University of California, San Diego in 1984 before joining the faculty of The Scripps Research Institute in 1989. Dr. Joyce is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.
Blake Simmons, PhD, VP of Deconstruction; Joint BioEnergy Institute
Blake is the Vice-President of the Deconstruction Division at the DOE's Joint BioEnergy Institute, where he leads a team of 35 researchers working on advanced methods of liberating fermentable sugars from lignocellulosic biomass. He is one of the principal co-investigators of JBEI, a $135M DOE funded project tasked with the development and realization of next-generation biofuels produced from non-food crops. Blake also manages the Biomass Science and Conversion Technology Department at Sandia. He has over 70 publications, book chapters, and patents.
Richard Mathies, PhD, Dean of Chemistry; Professor of Chemistry, UC Berkeley
Richard A. Mathies, a member of the chemistry faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, since 1976, was appointed in 2008 as the Dean of the College of Chemistry and the Gilbert Newton Lewis Professor. Mathies earned his MS (1970) and his PhD (1974) at Cornell under Andreas C. Albrecht, and worked under Lubert Stryer as a post doctoral fellow at Yale. His research focuses both on ultrafast resonance Raman spectroscopy of photoactive proteins and on lab-on-a-chip devices for high performance biomolecule and cell analysis.
Mathies serves on the scientific advisory board of Affymetrix, a company co-founded in 1993 by Stephen Fodor, who did his postdoctoral research with the Mathies group. Mathies is author of over 380 publications and 35 patents on photochemistry, photobiology, bioanalytical chemistry and genome analysis technology.
Brian Paegel, PhD, Assistant Professor of Chemistry, Scripps, Florida
Brian Paegel studies chemistry and biology in the confines of rationally designed and assembled microscopic compartments. His group exploits microfluidic technology to systematize the preparation of microdroplets for directed evolution studies. Prof. Paegel has a BS in chemistry from Duke, a PhD in chemistry from UC Berkeley, was a post-doctoral fellow in the Joyce lab at TSRI, and was an original co-founder of Allopartis, helping to develop IP for its platform technology.
Zev Gartner, PhD, Assistant Professor of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, UCSF
Zev Gartner received his BS in chemistry from UC Berkeley and performed his doctoral work at Harvard University in the lab of Professor David Liu, developing DNA-templated methods for molecular synthesis. He later returned to Berkeley for a post-doctoral fellow with Carolyn Bertozzi and is now a faculty member at UCSF. Zev's research uses synthetic chemistry modifications to cell surfaces to drive assembly of microtissues.
