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The Department of Chemical Engineering announces inaugural Endowed Lectureship

UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. – David A. Tirrell, the Ross McCollum-William H. Corcoran Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and director of the Beckman Institute at the California Institute of Technology, will present the Department of Chemical Engineering’s inaugural Endowed Lectureship at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 29, in the Huck Life Sciences Building Berg Auditorium on the University Park campus of Penn State.

The lecture is free and open to all students, faculty, alumni and members of the University community.

Tirrell’s lecture, “A Polymer Chemist’s Perspective on Protein Science and Engineering,” will focus on the differences between synthetic proteins and polymers, and the developments that have been instituted to bridge the gap between the two. New developments in artificial genes and proteins have provided a basis for new approaches to the design of macromolecular materials and the analysis of complex biological processes. 

For over a decade Tirrell served as the chairman of the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology, before returning to research in 2009. He has taught at Carnegie-Mellon University and the University of Massachusetts, where he served as director of the Materials Research Laboratory from 1984 to1998.

Tirrell’s research interests lie in macromolecular chemistry and the use of noncanonical amino acids to engineer and probe protein behavior. His contributions to these fields have been recognized by his election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and to all three branches (Science, Engineering and Medicine) of the U.S. National Academies.

The presentation will serve as the department’s first Endowed Lectureship and aims to bring together the materials science, chemistry, life science and engineering communities for an afternoon of learning and enrichment.

 

David Tirrell, Ross McCollum-William H. Corcoran Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering and Director of the Beckman Institute at the California Institute of Technology and 2015 Endowed Lectureship presenter  Credit: Penn StateCreative Commons

Last Updated September 29, 2015

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