Tony Kossiakoff

Dr. Anthony A. Kossiakoff, our keynote speaker, completed his undergraduate degree in Mathematics and Chemistry (after starting as a history major) at Davis and Elkins College in West Virginia. He then pursued his doctoral studies in Physical Chemistry at the University of Delaware. Dr. Kossiakoff spent the next four years at the California Institute of Technology as apostdoctoral scholar (working with Professor Robert Stroud) before joining Brookhaven National Labs as a Senior Biophysicist, where he developed applications of neutron diffraction to protein structural studies. He then worked at Genentech from 1983-1998, establishing and serving as the director of the Protein Engineering Department. He was also an adjunct professor at the University of California in San Francisco during this time. After spending a year as a Visiting Scholar at the University of Chicago, Dr. Kossiakoff moved there in 1998, and is currently the Otho S. A. Sprague Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and the Institute for Biophysical Dynamics. He is also a member of the Membrane Protein Structural Dynamics Consortium, a large-scale collaboration to elucidate the structure, function, and dynamics of membrane proteins. Dr. Kossiakoff’s research focuses on the molecular mechanism and energetics involved in hormone-induced receptor activation using a combination of X-ray crystallography, site-directed mutagenesis, phage display mutagenesis, and biophysical analysis. In addition, Dr. Kossiakoff’s group, along with Shohei Koide, has pioneered the technique of Chaperone-assisted Crystallography. Dr. Kossiakoff is an avid fly fisherman and a connoisseur of single-malt scotch.