Rate My Professor Lee Bardwell

Lee Bardwell is Professor of Developmental and Cell Biology and Systems Biology in the Charlie Dunlop School of Biological Sciences at the University of California, Irvine. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1992 and his B.A. from Wesleyan University in 1984. From 1993 to 1998, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Prof. Jeremy Thorner at the University of California, Berkeley. His research investigates mechanisms of specificity and integration in cell signaling networks, including protein kinase-substrate interactions, maintenance of specificity in interconnected networks, evolutionary logic of signaling and gene regulatory networks, and translation to human disease treatment. The Bardwell laboratory studies evolutionarily conserved and disease-relevant cell signaling pathways, with a focus on mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascades in yeast and mammalian cells. These pathways regulate cell growth, division, differentiation, and death, and are implicated in cancer and other diseases. Interdisciplinary approaches are employed, including molecular cell biology, biochemistry, biophysics, genetics, genomics, mathematical and computational biology, and engineering.

Bardwell has been recognized with several major awards and fellowships, including the Beckman Young Investigator Award from the Beckman Foundation (1999-2002), New Investigator Award in the Pharmacological Sciences from the Burroughs Wellcome Fund (1999-2002), Special Fellow Award from the Leukemia Society of America (1997-2000), NIH National Research Service Award Postdoctoral Fellowship (1993-1996), National Academies of Sciences Keck Futures Initiative Grantee (2004-2005), Predoctoral Training Grant from the National Cancer Institute (1987-1991), Phi Beta Kappa, and Sigma Xi (both 1984). Key publications include Pseudokinases: Flipping the ATP for AMPylation (Current Biology, 2019); Two hydrophobic residues can determine the specificity of MAP kinase docking interactions (Journal of Biological Chemistry, 2015); Noise filtering tradeoffs in spatial gradient sensing and cell polarization response (BMC Systems Biology, 2011); Ultrasensitive responses and specificity in cell signaling (BMC Systems Biology, 2010); Oscillatory phosphorylation of yeast Fus3 MAP kinase controls periodic gene expression and morphogenesis (Current Biology, 2008); and Protein Scaffolds Can Enhance the Bistability of Multisite Phosphorylation Systems (PLoS Computational Biology, 2012).