Rate My Professor Stephen Mayo

In Biology, Mayo's research centers on computational protein design, enzyme design, protein sequence evolution, protein-protein recognition, and related areas such as the design of calcium-deficient calmodulin and continuum electrostatic solvation models for protein design. The Mayo laboratory couples theoretical, computational, and experimental techniques to advance the understanding of structural biology, with practical applications in developing advanced biofuels and human therapeutics. He developed the ORBIT software suite, enabling fully automated protein design. Key publications include "De novo protein design: fully automated sequence selection" (Science, 1997, with B.I. Dahiyat), which achieved the first fully automatic design of a novel protein that folds correctly, and "Iterative approach to computational enzyme design" (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2011). Mayo's pioneering work in protein design led to his election to the National Academy of Sciences in 2004, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2022, recognition as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and appointment by President Barack Obama to the National Science Board, where he served a six-year term starting in 2013. His innovations have profoundly impacted computational structural biology and protein engineering.