User:Mikeb@nativis.us

I am the technology director for Nativis, a biotech research facility located in San Diego. Our primary area of study is cancer, and the stabilization of tubulin. My background is predominantly management with knowledge in electronics and biology.

RE: In answer to the April 19th CSSS questionnaire;

1. What topics do you have some expertise in and would you be willing to help others learn them?

My primary expertise is in team building and project management, bringing together multi disciplinary talent for outcome based collaborations in commercial laboratories. Collaborations combining mathematics, physics, biology, electrical engineering and computer science pose interesting challenges in team integration and experimental philosophy.

I would be delighted to share my experiences in the collaborative development of a low temperature SQUID based molecular diagnostic tool used to measure protein motion.

2. What do you want to learn?

My predominant interest involves cross disciplinary cooperation targeting the life sciences. I will be listening for innovative new approaches to cross-disciplinary analysis and problem solving, team building and integration.

3. Do you have any projects that would benefit from interdisciplinary approach?

My projects require the cooperative exchange of ideas between biology and theoretical physics. Cross-disciplinary modeling depends on the common understanding of a ‘core’ question, followed by tightly integrated protocol development. Nativis is currently investigating the correlation between magnetic micro poles and non covalent conformational changes in target receptors.

4. Do you have any ideas for what sort of project you would like to attack this summer?

I would lean slightly towards biological diagnostics, but otherwise have no preference. I love surprises.

5. What’s your favorite “big problem”?

My favorite problem encompasses a technique to characterize the native oscillatory motions of proteins by measuring changes in the surrounding magnetic environment (not magnetic resonance). Such techniques should yield information related to fold transitions descriptive of specific proteins.

6. If you were given the opportunity to see where we were in one hundred years with respect to progress on one problem/subject, what would it be?

Given one question and one peek into the future I would query medicine, proteins and bioinformatics, and ask how ‘protein’informatics may have evolved, contributing to medical advancement.