Faculty Rotations

I just received word on a tentative list of which faculty members I’ll be doing lab rotations with for the duration of my first few terms at UCSB. Happily enough, it looks like I got all the faculty I requested, though not in quite the order I had requested. Hopefully, the finalized list will be quite similar.
Each of my lab rotations will be 5 weeks, though they can be extended to 10 weeks by rotating with fewer faculty, a flexibility I like.
My first rotation will be with Norbert O. Reich, Professor (Chemistry & Biochemistry): Enzyme mechanisms; inhibitor design; enzyme design; DNA-protein interactions; prokaryotic and eukaryotic DNA methylation; carcinogenesis; nucleic acid based biomaterials; bio-inspired nano-electronics; quantum dot based biosensors.
My next rotation will be with Luc Jaeger, Assistant Professor (Chemistry & Biochemistry): Nucleic acid bionanotechnology and biomaterials; RNA tectonics; RNA evolution; study of complex systems with molecular automata.
Next up is Martin Sagermann, Assistant Professor (Chemistry & Biochemistry): Structural biology of ATPases; (re)design of proteins with novel architectures and functions; x-ray crystallography.
And lastly, Daniel E. Morse, Professor (Molecular, Cellular & Developmental Biology): Silicon biotechnology; biomineralization; biomimetics, biomolecular electronics and optoelectronic materials; biosensors.

I had the chance to meet all of these faculty members on my recruiting trip, and I thnk I’ll enjoy working with all of them. Currently, I suspect I’m leaning towards Professor Jaeger or Professor Sagermann, but who knows what will happen once I actually start my rotations?

(information quoted from BMSE Faculty Research)

5 Responses to “Faculty Rotations”

---

Sounds cool. You should explain to Dr. Reich that “prokaryotic” is a very poor way to group Bacteria and Archaea. Especially since I’m fairly sure they don’t actually methylate their DNA in the same way. Archaea are much closer to Eucarya. Bad prokaryote, bad.

Just out of curiosity, what’s the male to female ratio of profs in these departments? Of graduate students? I just noticed that all four of your picks have male names, something that wouldn’t be unlikely to happen in MCDB.

ShortSpeedFreak - September 12th, 2004 at 12:00 am

---

Yeah.. the female/male ratio in professors is pretty low, but they mentioned at the program overview that it’s an area they are actively recruiting to correct. Among the graduate students, it’s probably above 0.5, woman dominating. Which is typical for the biological sciences, but this program straddles biology and engineering, which is not renowned for it’s high female output.

Paradoxdruid - September 12th, 2004 at 1:53 am

---

I agree with Gilvoro, those all sound very cool. Hope you enjoy all of them.

mcmillan - September 13th, 2004 at 7:02 am

---

God, those all sound like they would have very interesting research. Of course I have been accused of being a biology whore.

gilvoro - September 12th, 2004 at 8:34 pm

---

Thanks, Andy and Gilvoro. 😀

Paradoxdruid - September 13th, 2004 at 9:40 am

---

Leave a Response (or trackback on your own site)

You must be logged in to post a comment.