Keynote Speaker
Dr. Elton Cairns
Department of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, UC Berkeley
Energy Storage Group, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Lester Andrews Graduate Research Symposium Keynote Speaker
Dr. Elton Cairns is a Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley, and a Faculty senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. After completing his Ph.D in Chemical Engineering at UC Berkeley, Dr. Cairns moved on to work for General Electric, Argonne National Laboratory, General Motors, and finally back to UC Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Dr. Cairns’ research includes electrochemical energy conversion, electrocatalysis, electrodes, X-ray absorption spectroscopies (XAS), synchrotron radiation, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR), fuel cells, batteries, and chemical engineering electrochemistry. Dr. Cairns is also active in many outside professional activities such as editing scientific journals, organizing scientific symposia, and serving on professional committees. Has served as both the President of the Electrochemical Society and President of the International Society of Electrochemistry.
Dr. Cairns’ selection as the Lester Andrews Keynote was determined by the graduate students in the MSU Department of Chemistry.
Dr. Walter Chazin
Departments of Biochemistry and Chemistry, and Center for Structural Biology
Vanderbilt University
Mississippi Regional Biophysical Consortium Keynote Speaker
Dr. Walter Chazin is the Chancellor’s Professor of Biochemistry and Chemistry and the Ingram Professor of Cancer Research and Vanderbilt University. He also directs the Center for Integrated Structural Biology and the Molecular Biophysics Training program at Vanderbilt. After completing his Ph.D in Chemistry at Concordia University, he performed postdoctoral research with Dr. Kurt Wütrich at E.T.H. in Switzerland and Dr. Peter E. Wright at the Scripps Research Institute. Dr. Chazin has been on faculty at Vanderbilt since 1999. Dr. Chazin has made significant contributions to the field of biomolecular NMR, where he has focused on proteins involved in calcium signaling, including calmodulin. More recently, he has been investigating the mechanism of DNA replication and single strand DNA priming. Dr. Chazin is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and in 2016 he was elected as a fellow of the Biophysical Society.