Derek Taylor

Derek is a leading Cryo-EM scientist and his work has yielded many of the insights that Rappta uses in designing its compounds. He is an Associate Professor of Pharmacology and Biochemistry at Case Western Reserve University. Derek received his Ph.D. in Biochemistry/Chemistry from the University of California, San Diego. He was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute-sponsored postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Dr. Joachim Frank (Nobel ’17), where he learned cryo-electron microscopy and its application in the structure determination of biological complexes. Derek then worked in Dr. Tom Cech’s (Nobel 89) group where he began to investigate the structure and function of telomere complexes. He has been recognized with a Research Scholar Award from the American Cancer Society and a prestigious Director’s New Innovator Award from the NIH.