Andrzej Joachimiak

Andrzej Joachimiak is the Director of Structural Biology Center and Midwest Center for Structural Genomics. He is an expert in synchrotron-based X-ray crystallography and structural biology. At Argonne, he has made significant contributions to the high-throughput crystallography using synchrotron radiation and the development of state-of-the-art facilities for macromolecular crystallography. The development and integration of the novel synchrotron beamlines, exploitation of the anomalous signal-based phasing methods in the third-generation environment and integration of hardware and software at the Structural Biology Center beamlines at the Advanced Photon Source contributed very strongly to the enhanced efficiency of such facilities worldwide.

Andrzej’s research has also contributed to methods development in protein expression and purification, crystallization and data collection using synchrotron radiation. The methods for phasing novel structures using X-ray crystallography have effectively reduced time and cost of structure determination. The contribution to high-throughput molecular biology and crystallography has also made a major impact on structural biology in the U.S. and globally as well. This encouraged the initiation of structural genomics and structural proteomics projects and also led to the determination of thousands of novel protein structures.

He has also made highly important contributions to the field of structural genomics. The Argonne-based Midwest Center for Structural Genomics (MCSG) is a highly successful program and major component of NIH funded Protein Structure Initiative (PSI). A number of technologies have been developed in the MCSG, including gene cloning and protein expression, new vectors for protein expression in bacteria, automated protein purification techniques, automated protein crystallization, robot-assisted crystal mounting and automated structure determination.

In addition to his duties at Argonne, Andrzej is also a Professor at the University of Chicago, Adjunct Professor at Northwestern University, Senior Fellow at the Computation Institute and the Institute for Genomics and Systems Biology.