QB3 Webinar: David Baker, University of Washington

Billions of years of evolution have proteins that perform incredibly specialized functions. But evolution must take a continuous path. What if, given all we now know about how structure relates to function, we could shortcut evolution and custom-design proteins for our own aims? We can. In this talk, David Baker of the University of Washington’s Institute for Protein Design will describe how his group designs and fabricates enzymes, motor proteins, biologics delivery vehicles, and other sophisticated macromolecules from first principles.

About the Speaker

David Baker is the director of the Institute for Protein Design, a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator, the Henrietta and Aubrey Davis Endowed Professor in Biochemistry, and an adjunct professor of genome sciences, bioengineering, chemical engineering, computer science, and physics at the University of Washington. His research group is focused on the design of macromolecular structures and functions.

He received his Ph.D. in biochemistry with Randy Schekman at the University of California, Berkeley, and did postdoctoral work in biophysics with David Agard at UCSF.