Welcome to the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics
Chair
Vice Chair
As one of the first departments of Biochemistry and Biophysics in the nation, we are proud of our strong tradition of combining cutting-edge technology with impactful biology. We continue to leverage this interdisciplinary approach to yield break-through discoveries in biomedicine.
Our faculty of over 30 primary and secondary members cover a broad range of research areas, with particular strengths in structural biology, chemical biology, gene regulation and protein folding.
We are also the proud home of the Eldridge Reeves Johnson Research Foundation which offers advanced physical instrumentation and instruction to researchers across campus.
We are actively growing, with several recent hires, and our faculty are broadly engaged across campus with many joint appointments in other departments, institutes and centers.
We welcome you to learn more about our department in the following pages or contact us.
We are excited to announce the return of biomolecular NMR to PSOM with our new state-of-the-art nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) system now up and running! Read more about the equipment and how it's being used here. Thank you to Nik Sgourakis and his team for all their efforts in rebuilding NMR expertise here at Penn and CHOP.
News & Publications
- Matt Gazzara awarded Blavatnik Family Fellowship
July 2021
Congratulations to Matt Gazzara, Barash and Lynch Lab member, recipient of a Blavatnik Family Fellowship in Biomedical Research - Van Duyne/Gupta Lab in Nucleic Acids Research
June 2021
Assembly of higher-order SMN oligomers is essential for metazoan viability and requires an exposed structural motif present in the YG zipper dimer - Murakami Lab in Nature Communications
June 2021
Cryo-EM structure of TFIIH/Rad4-Rad23-Rad33 in damaged DNA opening in nucleotide excision repair - Van Duyne Lab in Genome Biology
June 2021
Detection of SARS-CoV-2 RNA using RT-LAMP and molecular beacons
Postdoc Spotlight
Viridiana Herrera
Dr. Viridiana Herrera has been a postdoc in the Black lab since October of 2019. She did her graduate studies at the University of Oklahoma, where she worked on determining the structure of hemeprotein-nitroso complexes. Viridiana is now fascinated by centromere biology and currently interrogates the recruitment of the Chromosome Passenger Complex on to the chromosome for proper segregation. As part of the NIH/IRACDA sponsored PennPORT Program, she serves as an adjunct faculty member at Lincoln University, the first degree-granting HBCU. She also established a monthly Journal Club to champion social-justice and diversity in academia. Outside of UPenn, she serves as the Future Chair for the 2022 National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers Conference. In her free time, Viridiana enjoys listening to true crime podcasts and hiking.