During this time, most biophysical methods have been employed, and resulting publications include the use of NMR, ESR, ultracentrifugation, diffraction/scattering (X-ray, optical and neutron), differential scanning calorimetry, electron microscopy, CD, FRET, ATIR, membrane protein crystallizations, SPR, peptide synthesis and computational approaches, as well as molecular biology for expression, mutagenesis, in-gel fluorescence, PCR, fermentation, directed isotope labelling and novel membrane protein reconstitutions. The general approach is thus to address a system in a “hypothesis driven” approach aimed at understanding biology with a range of appropriate methods, rather than specialize in one method. He has trained 54 graduates in biophysics and was an Associate Editor of the Biophysical Journal (2000 - 2007), managing Editor of the European Biophysics Journal since 2000, and is a member of the EBSA executive committee. He has also been recognized by major national and international Societies with 15 awards, including from the Royal Society of Chemistry (Biomembrane Award and Interdisciplinary Award), the Biochemical Society (UK) (Morton Medal) and the American Biophysical Society (Anatrace Award, 2015), and has been elected a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Society of Biology and the American Biophysical Society.
Andrew's background is in solid state physics: he used time-resolved spectroscopy to study hot carrier relaxation in quantum wells and developed new spectroscopies of correlated states of 2D electrons in the fractional quantum Hall regime. His work on microstructured photonic materials included the invention, with Prof. Bob Denning, of a method for 3D optical lithography that has been widely adopted. With Prof. Bernie Yurke at Lucent Technologies’ Bell Laboratories he produced the first synthetic molecular machine made from and fuelled by DNA and demonstrated the principle of DNA hybridization catalysis – these two papers underpin almost all current research into DNA-based molecular computation and synthetic molecular machinery. His group were the first to show that three-dimensional DNA nanostructures can be produced in a single-step reaction with near-quantitative yield, opening the way to exploration of applications of DNA nanostructures in other areas of science and technology. Two- and three-dimensional DNA nanostructures can act as templates for the assembly of functional components and as active devices such as switches and molecular motors. AJT’s current research includes the study of synthetic molecular structures and machinery, including their use for the control of chemical synthesis, protein structure determination and as intracellular probes. Andrew is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics. He holds a Royal Society – Wolfson Research Merit Award, and has received an EPSC Senior Fellowship, the Rozenberg Tulip Award and the Tabor Medal of the Institute of Physics. |
10 March 2017
24 March 2017
24 March 2017