Biophysical Newsletter - February 2014

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2014

Biophysical Society Newsletter

february

Biophysical Society

Biophysicist in Profile dorothy Beckett

Officers President Francisco Bezanilla President-Elect Dorothy Beckett Past-President Jane Richardson Secretary Lukas Tamm Treasurer Paul Axelsen Council Karen Fleming Taekjip Ha Amy Harkins Samantha Harris Peter Hinterdorfer Juliette Lecomte Amy Lee Marcia Levitus Marjorie Longo Merritt Maduke Daniel Minor, Jr. Jeanne Nerbonne Gail Robertson Claudia Veigel Antoine van Oijen Bonnie Wallace David Yue Biophysical Journal Leslie Loew Editor-in-Chief

As a child, incoming Biophysical Society President Dorothy Beckett showed an early interest in the natural world. She collected bugs, performed experiments, and explored the world around her. It was in high school that Beckett really became interested in studying science in a formal setting. During this time, she attended a weekly series at Yale University, where she was able to visit laboratories and see sophisticated scientific equipment. Beckett and the other students also attended lectures on a broad range of scientific topics. Though she was interested in science, Beckett began her college career at Barnard College studying Chinese. After spending a year abroad in Taiwan, she real- ized that a career in Sinology would not be as intellectually satisfying for her as a future in science would. She continued studying Chinese after returning to the US, but committed to a major in chemistry. Beckett was able to obtain a work-study job in Cathy Squires’s laboratory in the Columbia University Biol- ogy Department. It was during her time there that Beckett first discovered biophysics: “I distinctly recall being asked to present a group meeting on a paper from the literature, and ended up choosing one published by the Cozarrelli labora- tory on DNA gyrase.This paper revealed to me that I could apply the quantitative approaches that I was learning in my chemistry courses to understanding biology.” Her focus was further shifted toward the biophysical by Charles Cantor and Jonathan Greer , who taught Beckett in her undergraduate years. After receiving her AB in chemistry from Barnard College, Beckett pursued a PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Illinois in the lab of Olke Uhlenbeck . As an advisor, Uhlenbeck encouraged Beckett to think quantitatively about biol- ogy. In her PhD project, she studied coupled equilibria in virus assembly. While at the University of Illinois, Beckett also took classes with Gregorio Weber , a pioneer in biological fluorescence spectroscopy. Beckett says, “[Weber] thought deeply about thermodynamic coupling in biology. His lectures on this topic were so inspiring for me that I attended his course twice.” Attending the University of Illinois was quite a change of scenery for Beckett after completing her undergraduate degree in New York City. Catherine Royer , a colleague who met Beckett while they were in graduate school together, recalls a particular occasion when the two lost their way in a cornfield after a Biochemis- try Department retreat in the country. “Coming from Barnard, Dorothy was in pretty big culture shock in central Illinois. I don’t think she had ever been lost in a cornfield before! Anyway, we finally found our way back by looking for trees. In central Illinois, about the only place you find trees is in towns—just the opposite of the east coast. I remember she found this really strange,” Royer recalls. Once she had obtained her PhD, Beckett arranged a postdoc to study with both Bob Sauer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and Gary Ackers at

“ I love the surprises that result from research, because they force me to think in ways that I could not have contemplated. ” – Dorothy Beckett

Society Office Ro Kampman Executive Officer

Newsletter Alisha Yocum Monika Zakrzewska Production Laura Phelan Profile

Ellen Weiss Public Affairs

The Biophysical Society Newsletter (ISSN 0006-3495) is published twelve times per year, January- December, by the Biophysical Society, 11400 Rockville Pike, Suite 800, Rockville, Maryland 20852. Distributed to USA members and other countries at no cost. Canadian GST No. 898477062. Postmaster: Send address changes to Biophysical Society, 11400 Rockville Pike, Suite 800, Rockville, MD 20852. Copyright © 2014 by the Biophysical Society. Printed in the United States of America. All rights reserved.