Geoffrey S. Waldo

Dr. Waldo is a renowned expert in structural genomics, protein folding and folding reporters (using GFP). Known as 'The GFP Guy', he was invited to the 2008 Nobel ceremony when Shimomura, Chalfie and Tsien won on GFP. He and his team at the bioscience division at Los Alamos National Laboratories have engineered a collection of improvements on GFP, creating vast possibilities for monitoring the folding, movement, solubility and interactions of proteins and peptides and performing structural genomics in a high throughput manner. His team also devised broadly useful screening and evolution methods to increase protein stability. These technologies have made it possible for researchers to screen through millions of cells in a few hours to find useful proteins for targets for drug design. They are now being used throughout the world to study not only the structures of proteins, but everything from the behavior of thermophiles to how neurons interact. Dr. Waldo received his PhD degree in chemistry from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. He was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at the University of North Carolina. He joined Los Alamos National Lab as a Directors funded postdoc. He received the prestigious Los Alamos Fellows Prize for Research in 2010.