SSP Monthly Meeting

MONTHLY MEETING FLYER

5:30 PM Technology Forum Speaker’s Presentation: Power Center Ballroom Section C
5:30 PM Social Hour: Power Center Fides Shepperson Suite
6:45 PM Dinner: Power Center Ballroom Section C
8:00 PM Business Meeting: Power Center Ballroom Section C
8:15 PM Technical Program Speaker’s Presentation: Power Center Ballroom Section C

TECHNOLOGY FORUM – 5:30 PM
Dr. Andre Samuel, Director of the Citizen Science Lab

Teaching for the Futures
Andre Samuel grew up in Washington, DC, and graduated from the University of the District of Columbia with a degree in Biology. Following graduate study at the George Washington University in Genomics and Bioinformatics, he received his PhD in Biology from Duquesne University. At Duquesne, his research focused on studying the structure and function of the cold shock related proteins in E. coli. As a Ph.D. candidate, Dr. Samuel founded the S.I.G.M.A Science Mentorship Initiative, a summer study program designed to introduce diverse ninth graders to the University’s lab with the long-term goal of encouraging the pursuit of careers in scientific research. Dr. Samuel’s research experience includes studying toxicology and carcinogenicity effects of novel drugs, hookworm vaccine development and tuberculosis reactivation in non-human primates. Dr. Samuel has a passion for STEM education and life science research. He believes that creating fun engaging and hands on lab experiences for people is the best pathway to an interest in STEM.

MONTHLY MEETING FLYER

TECHNOLOGY PROGRAM – 8:15 PM
Dr. Edward Solomon, Stanford University

“Bioinorganic Spectroscopy: Activating Metal Sites for Biological Electron Transfer”
Edward I Solomon, Stanford University, is the 2017 Pittsburgh Spectroscopy Awardee. This award was established in 1957 to honor individuals who have made outstanding contributions toward the development and understanding of spectroscopy.

Edward I Solomon received his Ph.D. at Princeton, and was a postdoctoral fellow at the Ørsted Institute in Denmark and then at Caltech. He was a Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology until 1982, when he joined the faculty at Stanford University, where he is now the Monroe E. Spaght Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Photon Science at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory. He was inducted as a member the National Academy of Sciences in 2005.

Professor Solomon’s research is in the fields of Physical–Inorganic and Bioinorganic Chemistry with emphasis on the application of a wide range of spectroscopic methods combined with QM calculations to elucidate the electronic structure of transition metal sites and its contribution to physical properties and reactivity.

Metal sites in biology often exhibit unique spectroscopic features that reflect novel geometric and electronic structures imposed by the protein that are key to reactivity. The Blue copper active site involved in long range, rapid biological electron transfer is a classic example. This talk presents an overview of both traditional and synchrotron based spectroscopic methods and their coupling to electronic structure calculations to understand the unique features of the Blue copper active site and their contributions to function. The relation of this active site to other biological electron transfer sites is further developed. In particular ultrafast XFEL spectroscopy is used to evaluate the met-S-Fe bond in cyt c, and its control by the protein (called the “entatic state”) in determining the function (electron transfer vs. apoptosis).

MONTHLY MEETING FLYER