With a number of patented methodologies to his credit, Dr. Pier Giorgio Righetti of Milan’s Polytechnic Institute (Italy) has been invited to share his knowledge as the 2008 Glasser Visiting Professor. Dr. Righetti will conduct three lectures during his time on campus which runs from Saturday, October 25 through Friday, Oct. 31, including his public lecture, The ProteoMiner and the FortyNiners: Searching for Gold Nuggets in the Proteomic Arena, on Wednesday, October 29 from 4 to 6 p.m. in the McNeil STC.
Additionally, Dr. Righetti will be hosted by Chemistry Department on Monday, October 27 from 3 to 4 p.m. in PTC 140 with an address titled SDS-PAGE (the second dimension of 2D maps). He will also be the guest of Pharmaceutical Sciences on Tuesday, October 28 from 3-4 p.m. in PTC 131 lecturing on the subject of Isoelectric focusing and immobilized pH gradients: the long march towards the steady-state.
A reception will follow each of the lectures. All events are free and open to the public.
Professor Righetti earned his PhD in organic chemistry from the University of Pavia in 1965. He then spent three years as a post doc at MIT (Cambridge, Mass.) and one year at Harvard (Cambridge, Mass.). He is currently a full professor of biochemistry at the Milan’s Polytechnic (Italy). He has developed and patented a number of important methodologies, such as isoelectric focusing in immobilized pH gradients, multicompartment electrolyzers with isoelectric membranes, membrane-trapped enzyme reactors operating in an electric field, temperature-programmed capillary electrophoresis and, most recently, combinatorial ligand libraries (hexapeptide baits) for the capture and amplification of the low-abundance proteome. His research interests include protein purification and crystallization, screening for genetic defects, DNA-based diagnosis and proteomics. During his scientific career, he has published over 700 articles.
The Glasser Visiting Professor program is sponsored by a generous donation from Abraham Glasser P’43 and his wife, Gloria. The Glassers’ gift enables the University to invite a young, innovative scientist from
Europe to interface with faculty and students and the surrounding scientific community. The Glassers hope such interactions will promote scholarly activity and collaborative efforts in the areas of biotechnology and molecular biology.