Pernilla Wittung-Stafshede | |
---|---|
![]() | |
Born | |
Nationality | Swedish |
Citizenship | Swedish and American |
Alma mater | Chalmers University of Technology |
Scientific career | |
Fields | Biochemistry, Biophysics, Chemistry |
Thesis | Intelligent nucleic acid interactions with peptide nucleic acids and in recombination proteins (1996) |
Doctoral advisor | Bengt Nordén |
Pernilla Wittung-Stafshede (maiden name Wittung) is a Swedish biophysical chemist, born in 1968, who is a professor of chemical biology at Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg. In 2019 she was named by International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry as a Distinguished Woman in Chemistry.
She received her Master of Science Degree in Engineering from Chalmers University of Technology and a doctorate at the same institution in 1996 in biophysical chemistry under Bengt Nordén, [1] with a thesis entitled Intelligent nucleic acid interactions with peptide nucleic acids and in recombination proteins. [2]
After her Ph.D., she worked for twelve years in the United States at the California Institute of Technology, Beckman Institute in Pasadena, California (1997–98), Tulane University in New Orleans, Louisiana [3] (1999-2003) and Rice University in Houston, Texas [4] (2004-2008). [5]
In 2008, she returned to Sweden to a professor position at Umeå University. Since September 2015, she has been a professor at Chalmers University of Technology and was the head of the Chemical Biology division. She leads a research group that focuses on the biophysical properties of proteins; both metal-transporting proteins and proteins that fold incorrectly and clump together. The research is basic science, but has links to diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and cancer. [6]
In 2010, Pernilla Wittung-Stafshede was one of ten researchers in Sweden, appointed as a Wallenberg Scholar, receiving a grant awarded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation that she has renewed several times (most recently in 2024). [7]
In 2017 she was elected a member of the council of Biophysical Society (BPS). [8] It was the second time ever for a Swedish scientist; the first one was Arne Engström 1960–1963. [9]
Pernilla Wittung-Stafshede has received a number of awards and prizes. These include:
Pernilla Wittung-Stafshede has published more than 200 scientific articles in peer-reviewed journals (January 2017). [19]
Is the Gender Gap Solved in Liberal Sweden? Debate article, published on STEM Women website. [20]
Academia in Sweden is not as equal as you think. Debate article in Swedish in the Swedish Research Council’s web magazine Curie.
In 2016, she was a guest blogger for the Research Council's web magazine Curie. [21]
Biophysics is an interdisciplinary science that applies approaches and methods traditionally used in physics to study biological phenomena. Biophysics covers all scales of biological organization, from molecular to organismic and populations. Biophysical research shares significant overlap with biochemistry, molecular biology, physical chemistry, physiology, nanotechnology, bioengineering, computational biology, biomechanics, developmental biology and systems biology.
Jacqueline K. Barton, is an American chemist. She worked as a professor of chemistry at Hunter College (1980–82), and at Columbia University (1983–89) before joining the California Institute of Technology. In 1997 she became the Arthur and Marian Hanisch Memorial Professor of Chemistry and from 2009 to 2019, the Norman Davidson Leadership Chair of the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Caltech. She currently is the John G. Kirkwood and Arthur A. Noyes Professor of Chemistry, Emerita.
Martin Karplus is an Austrian and American theoretical chemist. He is the Director of the Biophysical Chemistry Laboratory, a joint laboratory between the French National Center for Scientific Research and the University of Strasbourg, France. He is also the Theodore William Richards Professor of Chemistry, emeritus at Harvard University. Karplus received the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, together with Michael Levitt and Arieh Warshel, for "the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems".
Harry Barkus Gray is the Arnold O. Beckman Professor of Chemistry at California Institute of Technology.
Arieh Warshel is an Israeli-American biochemist and biophysicist. He is a pioneer in computational studies on functional properties of biological molecules, Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and holds the Dana and David Dornsife Chair in Chemistry at the University of Southern California. He received the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, together with Michael Levitt and Martin Karplus for "the development of multiscale models for complex chemical systems".
Sir Christopher Martin Dobson was a British chemist, who was the John Humphrey Plummer Professor of Chemical and Structural Biology in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge, and Master of St John's College, Cambridge.
Professor Nils Gunnar Hansson von Heijne, born 10 June 1951 in Gothenburg, is a Swedish scientist working on signal peptides, membrane proteins and bioinformatics at the Stockholm Center for Biomembrane Research at Stockholm University.
Bengt Johan Fredrik Nordén is a Swedish chemist.
Frances Separovic is a biophysical chemist and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Chemistry at the University of Melbourne, where she taught physical chemistry and trained graduate students in her field. She is credited with developing techniques that utilise nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) to study peptides in lipid bilayers, with applications in the study of the structure of membrane proteins and their effects on membranes. Her more recent research concerns 'the structure and interactions of amyloid peptides from Alzheimer's disease, pore-forming toxins and antibiotic peptides in model biological membranes'.
G. Marius Clore MAE, FRSC, FMedSci, FRS is a British-born, American molecular biophysicist and structural biologist. He was born in London, U.K. and is a dual U.S./U.K. Citizen. He is a Member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Society, a NIH Distinguished Investigator, and the Chief of the Molecular and Structural Biophysics Section in the Laboratory of Chemical Physics of the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases at the U.S. National Institutes of Health. He is known for his foundational work in three-dimensional protein and nucleic acid structure determination by biomolecular NMR spectroscopy, for advancing experimental approaches to the study of large macromolecules and their complexes by NMR, and for developing NMR-based methods to study rare conformational states in protein-nucleic acid and protein-protein recognition. Clore's discovery of previously undetectable, functionally significant, rare transient states of macromolecules has yielded fundamental new insights into the mechanisms of important biological processes, and in particular the significance of weak interactions and the mechanisms whereby the opposing constraints of speed and specificity are optimized. Further, Clore's work opens up a new era of pharmacology and drug design as it is now possible to target structures and conformations that have been heretofore unseen.
Jane Clarke is an English biochemist and academic. Since October 2017, she has served as President of Wolfson College, Cambridge. She is also Professor of Molecular Biophysics, a Wellcome Trust Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cambridge. She was previously a Fellow of Trinity Hall, Cambridge. In 2023, she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Tom Brown FRSC FRSE is a British chemist, biotechnologist, and entrepreneur. He is the Professor of Nucleic acid chemistry at the Department of Chemistry and Department of Oncology at the University of Oxford. Currently, he is serving as the President of the Chemical Biology Interface Division of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He is best known for his contribution in the field of DNA Repair, DNA Click chemistry, and in the application of Molecular genetics in forensics and diagnostics.
Siddhartha Roy is an Indian structural biologist, biophysicist, former director of the Indian Institute of Chemical Biology and the former director (officiating) of Bose Institute. Widely known for his studies on bacteriophage lambda and protein synthesis, he is an elected fellow of the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Indian National Science Academy. In 1999, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, the apex agency of the Government of India for scientific research, awarded him the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize for Science and Technology, for his contributions to Biological sciences.
Sara Snogerup Linse is a Swedish Professor of Biochemistry at Lund University. Her research considers the molecular mechanisms of protein self-assembly in Alzheimer's disease. She serves as Chair of the Committee for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. She was awarded the 2019 European Molecular Biology Organization Women in Science Award.
Andrew Graham Ewing is an American chemist.
Siv Gun Elisabeth Andersson is a Swedish evolutionary biologist, professor of molecular evolution at Uppsala University. She is member of both the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and of Engineering. She is also Head of basic research at the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation and has been co-director of the Swedish national center for large-scale research Science for Life Laboratory between 2017 and 2021. Her research focuses on the evolution of bacteria, mainly on intracellular parasites.
Xiaodong Zou is a Chinese-Swedish chemist who is a professor at Stockholm University. Her research considers the development of electron diffraction for the three dimensional characterisation of materials. She is a member of the Nobel Committee for Chemistry. She was elected to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences.
John Anthony Schellman was an American biophysical chemist at the University of Oregon, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a Biophysical Society Fellow, and an American Physical Society Fellow.
Bonnie Ann Wallace, FRSC is a British and American biophysicist and biochemist. She is a professor of molecular biophysics in the department of biological sciences, formerly the department of crystallography, at Birkbeck College, University of London, U.K.
Dr.Krishnarajanagar Nagappa Ganesh is an Indian Bio-Organic chemist and served as the (founding) director of Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Tirupati since 2017 till 2023. He is also the founding Director of Indian Institute of Science Education and Research, Pune, that was established in 2006 and served the office till 2017. He is a recipient of the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in chemical sciences (1998) for "his outstanding contribution towards the understanding of the chemical principles of DNA molecular recognition and for his work on various facets of DNA structure and its interaction with drugs and proteins". He is also a Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy since 2000.