David Baker (University of Washington)

Dr. Baker is a Professor of Biochemistry at the University of Washington, Seattle. He received his Ph.D. degree in biochemistry from the University of California, Berkeley, where he worked with Randy Schekman. His postdoctoral work in biochemistry and biophysics was done with David Agard at the University of California, San Francisco. Dr. Baker has received young investigator awards from the Packard Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the Beckman Foundation; the Irving Sigal Young Investigator Award from the Protein Society; and the Overton Award from the International Society of Computational Biology. He is a recipient of the Feynman Prize from the Foresight Institute and the AAAS Newcomb Cleveland Prize, and was recently elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences. David Baker uses a combination of experimental and computational approaches to understand the basic principles underlying protein folding and protein-protein interactions. He is applying this knowledge to the prediction and design of macromolecular structures and interactions.