BE Seminar: “Programming multicellular interactions and organization using synthetic cell adhesion molecules” (Adam Stevens, UCSF)

I completed an undergraduate degree in chemistry at Johns Hopkins University, where I conducted research in the laboratory of Professor Marc Greenberg and investigated how DNA lesions formed through oxidative damage inhibit base excision repair enzymes. I next attended graduate school at Princeton University in the Department of Chemistry under the guidance of Professor Tom Muir, where my research involved characterizing and engineering a class of fractured proteins called naturally split inteins. I then joined the laboratory of Professor Wendell Lim at the University of California, San Francisco in the Department of Cellular and Molecular Pharmacology for postdoctoral research, where I developed a molecular toolkit of engineered cell adhesion molecules that enables programmable cell-cell adhesion.  I am now proposing a research program that applies approaches from synthetic biology to elucidate molecular principles of cellular mechanics and enable the dissection and control of adhesion in multicellular systems.