Spring Seminar Series - Dr. Peter Setlow
March 6, 2009
Peter Setlow, Ph.D. with the end in sight" |
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Dr. Setlow grew up in New Haven, CT and at the age of 16 began his undergraduate studies at Swarthmore College. He graduated from Swarthmore in 1964 with a B.S. in Chemistry, and then went on to graduate school at Brandeis University where he earned his Ph.D. in Biochemistry. After graduate school, Dr. Setlow spent a year working as a post-doctoral fellow in the lab of Nobel Prize winner, Arthur Kornberg at Stanford University. During his time there he discovered the “Setlow Fragment,” but for those of you who know about DNA replication, you would know it as the Klenow Fragment. In 1971 Dr. Setlow moved back to the East Coast and set up his laboratory at the University of Connecticut Health Center, and has worked his way from Assistant Professor to Distinguished Professor of Molecular, Microbial and Structural Biology. Over the past 38 years, Dr. Setlow has studied the spore-forming bacterium Bacillus subtilis. Specifically, he has investigated the processes of sporulation, germination and outgrowth, as well as spore resistance and spore killing. Dr. Setlow leads an extremely successful research program as is evidenced by his 350 publications (just under 1 publication per month for the last 38 years, which is a truly remarkable feat). In addition to running a lab, he also teaches in both the graduate and medical schools at the Health Center, and has been awarded several teaching awards in both schools. He is a past editor of the Journal of Bacteriology, and currently serves as a reviewer for many journals. Dr. Setlow is also a member of several committees, does consulting work for outside companies, coaches a girls soccer team, and somehow still finds time to give outside seminars at small colleges like Nazareth.