ABOUT KEN
This all-day symposium highlights Ken Downing's remarkable contributions to
the growing field of cryo-electron microscopy and features investigators
who have worked together with Ken over the years or received direct training from him.
Ken first joined Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in 1977, having completed his PhD in Applied Physics at Cornell in 1973 and then spending most of his subsequent postdoctoral years at the ETH in Zurich. In the intervening 37 years, Ken’s career has spanned an amazing range of widely-recognized accomplishments in electron microscopy and related topics. Arguably the best known of these, within the realm of biochemistry and cell biology, is the work leading to the high-resolution crystal structure of tubulin. Ken’s first paper in this area was published with James Jontes, an undergraduate student, in 1992, and the work soon produced a chain-trace atomic model, published in 1998 with two postdocs, Eva Nogales and Sharon Wolf. Extensions of this work to the rich field of microtubule biology remain a major theme in Ken’s lab today. Numerous other contributions from Ken’s lab are equally highly-regarded within the community that continues to improve the methods and physical understanding of electron microscopy. Finally, within the past decade, Ken has expanded his research activity into two new areas. One is whole-cell electron tomography of bacteria, and the other is structural characterization of soft-matter (polymer) materials. Within the Donner Lab at LBNL, Ken is the go-to guy for solving technical problems and making equipment work the way it is supposed to. His kind and generous nature and his sly humor are among his most endearing qualities, making him loved by all.
