Karen N. Allen

Karen N. Allen received her B.S. degree in biology cum laude from Tufts University and her Ph.D. in biochemistry from Brandeis University, where she was a Dretzin scholar. Her graduate studies in the laboratory of Dr. Robert H. Abeles, a mechanistic enzymologist, focused on the design, synthesis and inhibition kinetics of transition-state analogues of esterases. Following her desire to see enzymes in action, she pursued X-ray crystallography during postdoctoral studies as an American Cancer Society fellow in the laboratories of Drs. Gregory A. Petsko and Dagmar Ringe at MIT and Brandeis. Since 1993, she has led her own research team at Boston University, first in the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the School of Medicine and then in 2008 at the College of Arts and Sciences where she is now a professor of chemistry. She is also a Professor of Material Science and Engineering and is on the faculty of the Department of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.

Dr. Allen’s research has focused on the elucidation of enzyme mechanisms with an eye toward design of therapeutic inhibitory ligands. Within this context, her laboratory has used biophysical methods to plumb the basis of enzyme-mediated phosphoryl transfer and decarboxylation reactions. In addition, Dr. Allen has sought to provide new tools for the exploration of protein structure and function by the invention and implementation of lanthanide binding tags. She has authored over 100 peer reviewed publications and is associate editor of the Beilstein Journal of Organic Chemistry. She has served as a regular panel member for both NIH and NSF grant review. Dr. Allen has been an invited lecturer and seminar speaker on over 90 occasions and has chaired numerous national and international meetings.