Chemistry and Chemical Biology

Ronald Bailey

Sun, 2010-06-13 02:05 — bailer

Name:	Ronald Bailey
Title:	Associate Chairman
Department	Chemistry and Chemical Biology
School	Science
Website:	http://www.rpi.edu/dept/chem/chem_faculty/profiles/baily.html

Bio Prior to joining Rensselaer in 1961, Bailey was a NATO Science Fellow at University College, London (1960-61) with Sir R. S. Nyholm.

Research Areas:
Coordination Chemistry
Synthesis and structural characterization of metal coordination compounds provide information on metal-ligand bonding. Two aspects of interest are, first, the modes of bonding of potentially ambidentate ligands with various metal ions, and second, mixed-metal complexes formed by organic ligands that bridge two different metal ions. Infrared and visible-UV spectroscopy, magnetic properties, X-ray diffraction, and electrochemical techniques are used in the characterization.

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Education Ph.D., McGill University, 1960 B.S., University of Manitoba, 1956

Curt Breneman

Sun, 2010-06-13 02:05 — brenec

Name:	Curt Breneman
Title:	Professor & Acting Dept. Head
Department	Chemistry and Chemical Biology
School	Science
Center	Rensselaer Exploratory Center for Cheminformatics Research (RECCR)
Website:	http://rpi.edu/dept/chem/chem_faculty/profiles/breneman.html

Bio Curt Breneman was born in Santa Monica, California in 1956, and went on to earn a B.S. in Chemistry at UCLA in 1980 followed by a Ph.D. in Chemistry at UC Santa Barbara (with an emphasis on Physical Organic and Computational Chemistry) in 1987. Following two years of post-doctoral research at Yale University, Dr. Breneman joined the faculty of the Department of Chemistry at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) and began a program in molecular recognition and computational chemistry based on his concept of "Transferable Atom Equivalents", or TAEs, as building blocks for describing the electronic and reactive character of molecules. Dr. Breneman currently holds the rank of Full Professor in the RPI Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, and is the Director of the NIH RECCR Center.

The Breneman research group primarily specializes in the development of new molecular property descriptors and machine learning methods that can be applied to a diverse set of physical and biochemical problems. Of paramount interest are methods that can increase the information content of molecular descriptors, and machine learning techniques that can exploit this data for the creation of fully validated, predictive property models. Current application areas include pharmaceutical ADME prediction, virtual high-throughput screening of drug candidates, protein chromatography modeling (HIC and ion-exchange), as well as polymer property prediction.

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Biotechnology

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Education Ph.D. in Chemistry at UC Santa Barbara (with an emphasis on Physical Organic and Computational Chemistry) 1987

Scholarly Works:

Zaretzki, J.; Bergeron, C.; Rydberg, P.; Huang, T.-w.; Bennett, K. P.; Breneman, C. M. "Rs-Predictor: A New Tool for Predicting Sites of Cytochrome P450-Mediated Metabolism Applied to Cyp 3a4" J. Chem. Inf. Model. 2011, 51, 1667-1689.
Das, S.; Krein, M. P.; Breneman, C. M. "Binding Affinity Prediction with Property-Encoded Shape Distribution Signatures" J. Chem. Inf. Model. 2010, 50, 298-308.
Das, S.; Krein, M. P.; Breneman, C. M. "Pesdserv: A Server for High-Throughput Comparison of Protein Binding Site Surfaces" Bioinformatics 2010, 26, 1913-1914.
Morrison, C. J.; Breneman, C. M.; Moore, J. A.; Cramer, S. M. "Evaluation of Chemically Selective Displacer Analogues for Protein Purification" Anal. Chem. 2009, 81, 6186-6194.
Das, S.; Kokardekar, A.; Breneman, C. M. "Rapid Comparison of Protein Binding Site Surfaces with Property Encoded Shape Distributions" J. Chem. Inf. Model. 2009, 49, 2863-2872.
Sukumar, N.; Krein, M.; Breneman, C. M. "Bioinformatics and Cheminformatics: Where Do the Twain Meet?" Curr. Opin. Drug Discovery Dev. 2008, 11, 311-319.
Yang, T.; Sundling, M. C.; Freed, A. S.; Breneman, C. M.; Cramer, S. M. "Prediction of Ph-Dependent Chromatographic Behavior in Ion-Exchange Systems" Anal. Chem. 2007, 79, 8927-8939.

Wilfredo Colon

Sun, 2010-06-13 02:05 — colonw

Name:	Wilfredo Colon
Title:	Associate Professor
Department	Chemistry and Chemical Biology
School	Science
Website:	http://rpi.edu/dept/chem/chem_faculty/profiles/colon.html

Bio After serving as a postdoctoral associate and then as a National Science Foundation (NSF) Fellow at the Fox Chase Cancer Center in Philadelphia, Colón joined the Rensselaer faculty in 1997. He was promoted to associate professor in 2004.

Colón’s many honors and awards include the 2010 American Chemical Society Award for Encouraging Disadvantaged Students into Careers in the Chemical Sciences, election as a fellow of the AAAS in 2007, the Rensselaer Early Career Award in 2002, a NSF Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2001, a NSF faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award in 2000, a Research Corporation Innovation Award in 1999. a American Heart Association Scientist Development Award in 1998, and a New Faculty Award from the Camille And Henry Dreyfus Foundation in 1997.

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Education Ph.D., Chemistry, Texas A&M University, 1993 B.S., Chemistry, Summa Cum Laude, the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez, 1988

Scholarly Works:

Xia, K., Zhang, S, Solina, B., Barquera, B., and Colón, W. (2010) Do Prokaryotes have more hyperstable proteins than eukaryotic organisms? Biochemistry, 49, 7239-7241 Zhang, S., Xia, K., Chung, W., Cramer, S.M., and Colón, W. (2010) Identifying kinetically stable proteins with capillary zone electrophoresis. Prot. Science, 19, 888-892

James Crivello

Sun, 2010-06-13 02:05 — crivej

Name:	James Crivello
Title:	Professor
Department	Chemistry and Chemical Biology
School	Science
Website:	http://rpi.edu/dept/chem/chem_faculty/profiles/crivello.html

Bio Crivello worked for several years as a research project manager at the General Electric Corporate Research and Development Center. In 1980, he was elected a Coolidge Fellow and spent 1986-1987 as a visiting professor at the University of Mainz in the Federal Republic of Germany. He joined the faculty of Rensselaer in 1988.

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Education Ph.D., Organic Chemistry, University of Notre Dame, 1966 B.S., Chemistry, Aquinas College, 1962

Scholarly Works:

J.V. Crivello “A new visible light photoinitiator system for the cationic polymerization of epoxides” J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 2009, 47(3) 866-875.
J.V. Crivello “Redox Initiated Cationic Polymerization”, J. Polym. Sci., Part A: Polym. Chem. 47(7) 1825-1835 (2009).

Alan R Cutler

Sun, 2010-06-13 02:05 — cutlea

Name:	Alan R Cutler
Title:	Professor
Department	Chemistry and Chemical Biology
School	Science

Bio Cutler received his Ph.D. in organic and transition organometallic chemistry at Brandeis University. Postdoctoral studies with David Dolphin (Harvard University and the University of British Columbia) and Richard Holm (Stanford University) rounded out his interests in bio-inorganic and inorganic chemistry. Cutler joined the RPI chemistry faculty in 1982.

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Education Ph.D., Organic and Transition Organometallic Chemistry, Brandeis University B.S., Chemistry, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 1954

Scholarly Works:

C. C. Tso and A. R. Cutler, “Electrophilic Activation, Reduction, and Carbonylation of the Acetyl Ligand on (PPh3)(CO)3CoCOCH3” Polyhedron, 1993.
P. K. Hanna, B. T. Gregg, D. L. Tarazano, J. R. Pinkes and A. R. Cutler, “Catalyzed and Noncatalyzed Hydrosilation of Organotransition Metal Acyl Complexes” Advances in Chemistry: New Science in Homogeneous Transition Metal Catalyzed Reactions, Chapter 33 (1992).

Peter Henry Dinolfo

Sun, 2010-06-13 02:05 — dinolp

Name:	Peter Henry Dinolfo
Title:	Assistant Professor
Department	Chemistry and Chemical Biology
School	Science
Website:	http://homepages.rpi.edu/~dinolp/

Bio Research Interests
Design and Synthesis of Supramolecular Coordination Compounds
Fundamentals of Electron Transfer in Inorganic Materials
Electrochemistry and Spectroscopy of Inorganic Compounds
Development of Redox Catalysts for Solar Fuel Formation
Surface Functionalization and Modification Techniques

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Education B.S., State University of New York, College at Geneseo, 1998 Ph.D., Northwestern University, 2004 Postdoctoral Scholar, Stanford University, 2004-2007

Jim Kempf

Sun, 2010-06-13 02:05 — kempfj2

Name:	Jim Kempf
Title:	Assistant Professor
Department	Chemistry and Chemical Biology
School	Science
Website:	http://rpi.edu/dept/chem/chem_faculty/profiles/kempf.html

Bio Prof. Kempf trained in chemical physics with Prof. Dan Weitekamp at Caltech, where he developed optical nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) methods that he used to image single-electron wavefunctions in structured semiconductor materials. In 2001, he was honored with Caltech’s McCoy award for top doctoral research in chemistry. Following his graduate work, Dr. Kempf worked for one-year at Cornell with Prof. John Marohn. There he developed a nanoscale imaging technique using force-detected NMR, an approach that dramatically improves on the sensitivity of the conventional, inductively detected experiment. Just prior to his arrival at RPI, Dr. Kempf was an NIH Kirchstein postdoctoral fellow at Yale working with Prof. Pat Loria. There, he characterized relations between motional dynamics and the function of large (>50 kDa) protein molecules. At Yale, Dr. Kempf developed an NMR relaxation experiment that extends the timescale of accessible motions by an order of magnitude. In separate work, he uncovered surprising functional significance of motions in the enzyme triosephosphate isomerase even though the motions are 104‑fold faster than catalysis. This demonstrates the utility of this motional time scale as a reporter on the functional state of an enzyme.

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Education Ph.D., California Institute of Technology, 2000 B.S., SUNY Fredonia, 1993

Gerald Korenowski

Sun, 2010-06-13 02:05 — koreng

Name:	Gerald Korenowski
Title:	Professor
Department	Chemistry and Chemical Biology
School	Science
Website:	http://rpi.edu/dept/chem/chem_faculty/profiles/korenowski.html

Bio Prior to joining the RPI faculty in 1982, Korenowski was a postdoctoral research associate at Columbia University and a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellow at SUNY/Stony Brook.

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Education M.S., Ph.D., Cornell University B.S., Pennsylvania State University

K. V. Lakshmi

Sun, 2010-06-13 02:05 — lakshk

Name:	K. V. Lakshmi
Title:	Assistant Professor
Department	Chemistry and Chemical Biology
School	Science
Center	Baruch Center for Biochemical Solar Energy Research
Website:	http://www.baruch60center.org/group/index.php

Bio Dr. Lakshmi is trained in the development and application of advanced biophysical spectroscopy at Brandeis, the Francis Bitter Magnet Laboratory at MIT, and Yale University.

Career Highlights:
Dr. Lakshmi is recognized worldwide as a leader in the current generation of young biophysicists. She is one of very few researchers around the world with expertise and training in developing both advanced solids NMR and pulsed multi-frequency EPR spectroscopy methods.

Research Areas:
Her current research collaborations include academic institutions and national laboratories— Brookhaven National Laboratory, MIT, and Imperial College, London, to name a few. Dr. Lakshmi is a reviewer for the US Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, the American Chemical Society and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. She holds visiting appointments at Yale and the Argonne National Laboratory.

Dr. Lakshmi is the recipient of several awards for her outstanding contributions in the field of membrane bioenergetics and excellence in photosynthesis research, as well as a UNESCO Fellowship.

Publications:
Dr. Lakshmi has authored over 45 peer-reviewed journal publications, and is an invited speaker at numerous conferences.

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Funding Agency

Signature_Thrust

Energy and the Environment

Keywords

Bio-inspired Solar Energy Conversion

Scholarly Works:

46. S. Milikisiyants, R. Chatterjee and K. V. Lakshmi "Two-Dimensional 1H HYSCORE Spectroscopy of Dimanganese Di-mu-oxo Mimics of the Oxygen Evolving Complex of Photosystem II" Manuscript Submitted.
45. N. Srinivasan, R. Chatterjee, S. Milikisiyants, J. H. Golbeck and K. V. Lakshmi High-Resolution 1H and 14N Imaging of the Phylloquinone Binding Pocket in Photosystem I Using Two-Dimensional Hyperfine Sub-Level Correlation Spectroscopy (2011) Biochemistry, 50, 3495.
44. R. Chatterjee, S. Milikisiyants, C. Coates, and K. V. Lakshmi High-Resolution Two-Dimensional 1H and 14N Hyperfine Sub-Level Correlation (HYSCORE) Spectroscopy of the Primary Quinone of Photosystem II (2011) Biochemistry, 50, 491.
43. S. Milikisiyants, R. Chatterjee, A. Weyers, A. Meenaghan, C. Coates and K. V. Lakshmi The Ligand Environment of the S2 State of Photosystem II: A Study of the Hyperfine Interactions of the Tetranuclear Manganese Cluster by 14N 2D HYSCORE Spectroscopy (2010) J. Phys. Chem B., 114, 10905.
42. B. Jagannathan, S. Dekat, J. H. Golbeck and K. V. Lakshmi, A Site-Directed Spin Labeling EPR Study of the Assembly of the PsaC Subunit in Photosystem I (2010) Biochemistry, 49, 2398.
41. Mukesh Kumar, B. R. Mehta, V. N. Singh, R. Chatterjee, S. Milikisiyants, K. V. Lakshmi and J. P. Singh The Role of the Stoichiometry of Indium and Oxygen on the Gas Sensing Properties of Indium Oxide Nanostructures (2010) Appl. Phys. Lett. 96 (12), 123114.
40. A. M. Weyers, R. Chatterjee, S. Milikisiyants and K. V. Lakshmi Structure and Function of Quinones in Biological Solar Energy Transduction: A Differential Pulse Voltammetry, EPR and Hyperfine Sublevel Correlation (HYSCORE) Spectroscopy Study of Model Benzoquinones. (2009) J. Phys. Chem. B 113 (46), 15409.
39. M. Kumar, R. Chatterjee, S. Milikisiyants, B. R. Mehta and J. P. Singh, F. Singh and K. V. Lakshmi EPR spectroscopy of Hydrogen Defects in Tuned Indium Oxide Nanostructures (2009) Appl. Phys. Lett., 95, 13102.
38. M. Kumar, V. N. Singh, B. R. Mehta, F. Singh, J. P. Singh and K. V. Lakshmi Origin of Photoluminescence in Indium Oxide Octahedron Structures: The Role of Oxygen Vacancies (2008) Appl. Phys. Lett. 92, 171907.
37. Ritika Uppal, K. V. Lakshmi and Ann M. Valentine Isolation and Characterization of the Iron-Binding Properties of a Primitive Monolobal Transferrin from Ciona intestinalis (2008) J. Biol. Inorg. Chem. 13, 873.
36. C.-I. Lee, K. V. Lakshmi and G. W. Brudvig EPR Studies of the Functional Role of Ca2+Ions in the Oxygen-Evolving Complex of Photosystem II by Metal Ion Substitution (2007) Biochemistry 46, 3211.
35. R. Uppal, C. D. Incarvito, K. V. Lakshmi and A. M. Valentine Aqueous Spectroscopy and Redox Properties of Carboxylate-Bound Titanium (2006) Inorg. Chem. 45, 1795.
34. O. G. Poluektov, S. V. Paschenko, L. M. Utschig, K. V. Lakshmi and M. C. Thurnauer Direct Evidence for Bidirectional Electron Transfer in Photosystem I (2005) J. Amer. Chem. Soc. 127, 11910.

George I. Makhatadze

Sun, 2010-06-13 02:05 — makhag

Name:	George I. Makhatadze
Title:	Constellation Chair
Department	Biology Chemistry and Chemical Biology
School	Science
Center	Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies (CBIS)
Constellation	Biocomputation & Bioinformatics
Website:	http://www.rpi.edu/dept/bio/faculty/profiles/makhatadze.html

Bio Dr. Makhatadze completed his postdoctoral work at the Department of Biology at the Johns Hopkins University before moving to his first faculty position in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Texas Tech University. After three years at Texas Tech he moved to the Penn State University College of Medicine, where he was Professor at the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and directed a graduate program in Chemical Biology. Dr. Makhatadze joined Rensselaer in 2007 as a Constellation Professor in Biocomputation and Bioinformatics.

Dr. Makhatadze is on the editorial boards of the Journal of Biological Chemistry, Biochemica et Biophysica Acta, and Protein Engineering, Design and Selection. He is a member of the American Chemical Society, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the Biophysical Society, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology, and the Protein Society. He is also a past and present member of the scientific review committees for the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF).

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Funding Agency

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Biotechnology

Education B.S., Georgia State University Biophysics Ph.D., Moscow Physico-Technical Institute Biophysical Chemistry and Structural Biology