Director of Physical Biosciences Division at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Dean A. Richard Newton Memorial Professor, Dept of Bioengineering, University of California, Berkeley
Adam Arkin, 43, a leading authority on the evolutionary design principles of cellular networks and populations and their application to systems and synthetic biology.
Arkin received his undergraduate degree in chemistry from Carleton College in 1988 and his Ph.D in physical chemistry four years later from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He then pursued postdoctoral studies at Stanford University in chemistry with John Ross and in developmental biology with Harley McAdams and Lucy Shapiro. In 2000 he was featured in a special edition of Time magazine on “Future Innovators,” is a member of the first class of the Technology Reviews TR100, and in 2007 he was elected as a Fellow in the American Academy of Microbiology.
The thrust of Arkin’s research has focused on developing the physical theory, computational tools and experimental approaches for understanding cellular processes critical to life. The goal is to provide a framework that will facilitate the design and engineering of new functions and behaviors in cells through synthetic and systems biology. He once compared synthetic biology to computer design and said, “Most genetic engineering has been done by hook-or-by-crook. It takes a lot of trial-and-error to build simple things into cells, like the ability to produce a lot of a functional protein. We want to actually program cells as if they’re computers or design them as if they were advanced aircraft so they can do much more complicated tasks of benefit to society.”
Arkin has been serving Physical Biosciences Division as the head of its Synthetic Biology Department until his promotion in May to Division Director. In addition, he directs the Joint BioEnergy Institute’s Bioinformatics Group and Berkeley Lab’s Virtual Institute of Microbial Stress. He is a Professor of bioengineering at the University of California (UC), Berkeley and was an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) until 2007.
To see the powerpoint-presentation.