People Tag Search Results | The Huck Institutes (en-US)

Melik Demirel

Huck Chair in Biomimetic Materials; Pearce Professor of Engineering
Prof. Dr. Melik Demirel holds a tenured professor position in engineering at Penn State, and has a decade of experience in biosensors and nanomaterials. Prof. Demirel’s achievements have been recognized, in part, through his receipt of a Young Investigator Award, an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship, an Institute for Complex Adaptive Matter Junior Fellowship, the Pearce Development Professorship at Penn State, a Boeing Distinguished Speaker Award. Prof. Demirel received his Ph.D. from Carnegine Mellon University and B.S. and M.S. degrees from Bogazici University.

B. Tracy Nixon

Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
Structural and functional basis of cellulose synthesis. Using Physcomitrella patens and other organisms as model systems, we are learning how plants make cellulose for building new cell wall. The studies use methods of molecular biology and cryoEM to characterize the enzyme as a monomer, and when it assembles into its larger 'Cellulose Synthase Complex '(CSC for short). The aim is to understand cellulose synthesis to explain fundamentals of cell wall biology in plants, and to enable manipulation of its synthesis for applications in fields of bioenergy and materials.

Jack Vanden Heuvel

Director of the Center for Excellence in Nutrigenomics; Professor of Molecular Toxicology
Mechanisms of action of hypolipidemic drugs and peroxisome proliferators; steroid hormone receptor-mediated signal transduction; signal transduction by lipids and fatty acids; receptor-mediated carcinogenesis.