Peptide Materials Engineering

Announcing The USC Inaugural Pings LectureshipwithProfessor Matthew TirrellDepartments of Chemical Engineering and Materials
Materials Research Laboratory
Institute for Collaborative Biotechnologies
California NanoSystems Institute
University of California, Santa Barbara
Santa Barbara, CA 93106-5130
Tel:(805) 893-3141, Fax:(805) 893-8124
E-mail: tirrell@engineering.ucsb.eduAbstractPeptides are functional modules of protein macromolecules that can be
displayed apart from the whole protein to create biofunctional surfaces
and interfaces, or can be re-assembled in new ways to create synthetic mimics of protein structures. Each of these routes are being employed to gain new insight into protein folding and to develop new, functional, biomolecular materials. Examples of work from our laboratory in this area using peptide-lipid conjugate molecules (peptide amphiphiles) will be discussed relating to multi-functional surfaces, liposomal drug delivery, protein analogous micelles, DNA-binding peptide modules and anti-microbial peptides.Professor Matthew Tirrell is Dean of Engineering at UC, Santa Barbara. He received a B.S. in Chemical Engineering at Northwestern University and a Ph.D. in 1977 in Polymer Science from the University of Massachusetts. From 1977 to 1999 he was on the faculty of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Minnesota, where he served as head of department from 1995 to 1999. His research has been in polymer surface properties, adsorption, adhesion, surface treatment, friction, lubrication and biocompatibility. He has co-authored about 270 papers and one book and has supervised about 70 Ph.D. students. Professor Tirrell has been a Sloan and a Guggenheim Fellow, a recipient of the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award and has received the Allan P. Colburn, Charles Stine, William H. Walker and the Professional Progress Awards from AIChE, and was the Institute Lecturer in 2001. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of: the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineers, the AAAS, and the APS. In 2003, he concluded two years of service as co-chair of the steering committee for the National Research Council: "Beyond the Molecular Frontier: Challenges for Chemistry and Chemical Engineering".

Location: Henry Salvatori Computer Science Center (SAL) - 101

Audiences: Everyone Is Invited

Contact: Petra Pearce Sapir