Marqusee to lead QB3 at Berkeley

February 27, 2010
By Jan Ambrosini and Kaspar Mossman, QB3

Susan Marqusee.

UC Berkeley chancellor Robert Birgeneau announced on February 25 the appointment of Susan Marqusee, M.D., Ph.D., as campus director of QB3-Berkeley.

Marqusee, a molecular and cell biologist and protein folding expert, has served as associate director of QB3-Berkeley since its founding in 2000. For the past nine months, Marqusee served as interim director of QB3-Berkeley, following her predecessor Graham Fleming's appointment as Berkeley's vice chancellor for research in April 2009.

“Susan Marqusee has been involved with QB3 since its inception,” says Regis Kelly, Ph.D., director of QB3. “She knows it better than any of us. We look forward to taking advantage of Susan’s experience and enthusiasm.”

During her tenure as associate director, Marqusee helped shape QB3's research agenda and academic programs, and played a key role in the design and construction of Stanley Hall, the multidisciplinary research building on the Berkeley campus completed in 2007 and administered by QB3.

“QB3 provides a unique opportunity to bring together scientists and engineers from different disciplines who share the goal of applying physical science and engineering approaches to bear on problems in biology,” says Marqusee. “I’m honored and delighted that I can help catalyze this work through my new role as Berkeley campus director.”

Marqusee's own research lab thrives in QB3's multidisciplinary environment. "Proteins undergo an incredible transformation from one-dimensional sequence information into complex three-dimensional shapes that carry out intricate cellular functions. We still, however, don't have enough biophysical knowledge to translate this sequence information into functional insights," says Marqusee. Her laboratory uses a combination of biophysical, structural and computational techniques to explore the structural and dynamic information encoded in the linear sequence of amino acids.

At UC Berkeley, Marqusee is a professor of molecular and cell biology. She received her A.B. in Physics and Chemistry from Cornell University in 1982, and her M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University in 1990. After a post-doctoral fellowship at MIT, she joined the UC Berkeley faculty as an assistant professor in 1992, advancing to associate and full professor in 1998 and 2001 respectively.