Dr. Christian Hilty will join the Department of Chemistry at Texas A&M University as an Assistant Professor in August of 2006. Dr. Hilty received his undergraduate degree from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich. During his graduate work, which he completed at the same institution, he studied membrane proteins with nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR). Currently, he holds an appointment as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California at Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where he uses hyperpolarization techniques to enhance NMR spectroscopy and imaging.
In his future work, Dr. Hilty will apply and further develop modern techniques in NMR to determine the structure and functional mechanisms of membrane proteins at the atomic level. In particular, he will study aspects of membrane biogenesis, transport and signaling. In order to extend the applicability of NMR to a large number of membrane protein systems that cannot be studied with conventional methods due to low sensitivity, Dr. Hilty will develop new hyperpolarization strategies. This will enable investigating processes such as ligand binding, which for example should lead to basic insights into signaling processes, as well as new strategies in drug discovery.
To learn more about the research being carried out in Dr. Christian Hilty's group, go to http://www.chem.tamu.edu/faculty/faculty_detail.php?ID=1423.