Sarah Veatch

Last updated

Sarah Louise Veatch
Born
NationalityAmerican
Education
Awards Sloan Research Fellow (2012)
Margaret Oakley Dayhoff Award (2014)
Scientific career
Fields Biophysics
Institutions University of Michigan (2010–)
Thesis Phenomenology of constrained supersymmetry  (2004)
Doctoral advisor Sarah L. Keller

Sarah Louise Veatch is an American biophysicist, associate professor of biophysics at University of Michigan.

Contents

Early life

Veatch was raised in Brookline, Massachusetts by her mother, a medical doctor, and her father, William R. Veatch, a membrane biophysicist. [1]

Education

Veatch's interest in physics began in high school. She was involved in her high school's gay–straight alliance in the mid-1990s "but struggled with her LGBT identity until college". [2] She earned a B.S. in physics in 1998 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). [1] [2] Her undergraduate thesis was titled VLF magnetic field correlation measurements between LIGO sites. Her thesis supervisor was Rainer Weiss. [3]

Veatch worked for a year as an electrical engineer, programming lighting consoles used in auditoriums. In 2004, she completed her Ph.D. in physics at University of Washington under her advisor Sarah L. Keller, after which she conducted one year of postdoctoral studies with Robert E. W. Hancock at University of British Columbia. She also worked with Jenifer Thewalt at Simon Fraser University. Veatch completed further postdoctoral studies with Barbara A. Baird and David Holowka at Cornell University. Here, she built upon her Ph.D. work, exploring phase separation in isolated biological membranes. [1]

Career

After her postdoctoral work, Veatch was hired as an Assistant Professor of Biophysics at the University of Michigan, [1] and was promoted to the position of associate professor in May 2017. [4] She researches the physical properties of lipids and the influence on the plasma membrane function. [5] She investigates signalling pathways initiated in the membrane and has developed new super-resolution fluorescence microscopy techniques to further study interactions in the membrane. [6]

Veatch is a Presidential Visiting Fellow of Yale University 2019-2020 where she is working on ion channel function and phase transitions in membranes and polymers alongside Ben Machta. [6]

Veatch's recent work has examined the role of lipid phase behavior in organizing plasma membrane components, or correlations between the partitioning preferences of membrane-anchored probes in giant plasma membrane vesicles (GPMVs) and their organization in live cells. Veatch has put forward a theory where proximity to a membrane phase transition drives the formation of membrane domains. [7]

Awards and honors

In 2012, Veatch won a Sloan Research Fellowship. [5] In 2014, she was awarded the Margaret Oakley Dayhoff Award "for her substantial contributions to the field of membrane physical chemistry as it translates into biological systems." [8]

She was named a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2023, "for foundational work in understanding the miscibility phase transition and associated critical phenomena in membranes, and for rigorously applying these physical concepts to biological processes". [9]

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 "Sarah Veatch". The Biophysical Society. Retrieved July 8, 2019.
  2. 1 2 Unsay, Joseph D. (March 27, 2017). "Where are all the LGBT scientists? Sexuality and gender identity in science". Science in School. Retrieved July 8, 2019.
  3. Veatch, Sarah Louise (1998). "VLF magnetic field correlation measurements between LIGO sites". library.mit.edu. Retrieved July 8, 2019.
  4. "A Milestone for UofM Biophysics!". College of Literature, Sciences, and the Arts. University of Michigan. June 5, 2017. Retrieved February 26, 2020.
  5. 1 2 "Two U-M early-career scientists win 2012 Sloan research fellowships". University of Michigan News. February 16, 2012. Retrieved July 8, 2019.
  6. 1 2 "Presidential Visiting Fellow 2019-2020". Department of Physics. Yale University. Retrieved February 26, 2020.
  7. Shelby, Sarah A.; Veatch, Sarah L. (November 1, 2023). "The Membrane Phase Transition Gives Rise to Responsive Plasma Membrane Structure and Function". Cold Spring Harbor Perspectives in Biology. 15 (11): a041395. doi:10.1101/cshperspect.a041395. PMID   37553204.
  8. "Congratulations to Prof. Sarah Veatch as she has received the 2014 Margaret Oakley Dayhoff Award for her substantial contributions to the field of membrane physical chemistry as it translates into biological systems!". College of Literature, Sciences, and the Arts. University of Michigan. August 7, 2013. Retrieved July 8, 2019.
  9. "2023 Fellows". APS Fellow Archive. American Physical Society. Retrieved October 19, 2023.