Biophysical Society Bulletin | March 2021

Cheers to Volunteers

Connie Jeffrey CPOW (Committee for Professional Opportunities for Women)

Connie Jeffrey

Is this your first volunteer position for BPS? If not, what other positions have you held? Yes, CPOW was my first volunteer position for BPS. Why do you volunteer? I joined CPOW when I was an assistant professor because I wanted to become more active in BPS and meet more leaders in science instead of just attending the Annual Meeting and sometimes giving a talk or presenting a poster, and I believe strongly in the mission of CPOW to help level the playing field for women and everyone else in science. In my over 30 years in science I’ve seen a lot of problems, including deficient men- toring, extra requirements of service, differences in start-up packages, having to “prove” repeatedly that one is capable of doing independent research, and sometimes outright hos- tility towards women in science. Too many smart, talented women who have been successful in publishing and receiving funding leave academic science or stay but might need to work longer hours (and sometimes for less pay) to meet extra requirements that take valuable time away from research, publishing, and grant writing. CPOW is one of the groups that is finding solutions and taking action to level the playing field and patch the leaky pipeline. What has been a highlight from your volunteer experience? I have met wonderful, hardworking, brilliant, creative people who come up with ideas and solutions and step up and make them happen. Each year I look forward to our two Committee meetings where I get to see old friends, hear about accom- plishments and new ideas, and help make plans for the next year.

Do you have advice for others who might be thinking about volunteering? Look on the BPS website for the descriptions of the Commit- tees and the rosters of volunteers. If you find a Committee that you might want to join, contact a member to learn more about what that Committee does. We are all very busy with our research, but I’ve found that volunteering with CPOW can have a big impact on an important issue with a small time commitment each year. When not volunteering for BPS, what do you work on? My lab is interested in the relationships among protein sequences, structures, and functions. Which similarities and differences in amino acid sequences lead to similarities in structures and functions, and which lead to differences in structure and/or function? For example, one protein super- family can contain enzymes with the same function as many of the proteins in the superfamily (a canonical activity), en- zymes with a different substrate or catalytic function (non ca- nonical activity), moonlighting proteins with another function in addition to the catalytic function, and pseudoenzymes that resemble enzymes but whose only function does not involve catalysis. We are also investigating how disease-causing amino acid substitutions affect protein structure, stability, folding and/or function. My research team uses biochemistry (enzyme assays, mutagenesis), biophysics (binding studies, X-ray crystallography), and bioinformatics to address these questions. With the pandemic this year, we’ve focused on and expanded some of the bioinformatics studies to create projects for undergraduate and high school students when other research opportunities were cancelled.

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March 2021

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