Jay Keasling
UNL alumnus Jay Keasling didn't set out to change the world. But he just might.
At the University of California at Berkeley, Keasling runs a lab-staffed by 50 post doctoral and graduate students and funded by a $42.6 million Gates Foundation grant-that is creating a cure for malaria.
He is also engaged in research that could lead to breakthrough treatment for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS.
And in February, he was among a group of scholars that received $500 million from British Petroleum to create the Energy Biosciences Institute, which will be a world-class hub of research on biofuels and clean energy.
Not bad for a boy from a farm outside of Harvard, Nebr., population 976.
Keasling, who graduated from UNL in 1986, remembers his time in Lincoln fondly. He was vice president of Delta Tau Delta fraternity and served on the College of Arts and Sciences advisory committee. Classes he took with a popular biology professor set him on the path to his current cutting edge work.
"One of the best experiences I had at UNL was with Dr. John Janovy at the Cedar Point field station at Ogallala," he said. "I spent the summer after my freshman year there, and it was great fun. I took classes in field biology, and that changed my interests; I went to the university thinking I would go on to medical school, but that summer experience really convinced me to go into research."
After receiving his PhD in microbiology at the University of Michigan, and completing post-doctoral research at Stanford, Keasling accepted a position at Berkeley in 1992. Ten years later, he was appointed head of the first synthetic biology department in the country. Discover magazine named him Scientist of the Year in 2006.
Keasling's work may soon influence the health and well being of every person on the planet. He and his colleagues are developing an affordable malaria medicine that-in combination with an existing drug-appears to permanently eradicate the disease in an infected individual.
In his "spare time," Keasling is also researching Prostratin, a medication that occurs in its natural form in trees grown on an island in the South Pacific. An ethno botanist took samples to the National Institutes of Health, where researchers purified the active ingredient and found that it was effective against HIV.
Keasling's work is part of a sea change in the way the global health system functions. He noted that one reason he and his team have received such significant funding is that they incorporate new technologies into their research. In the past there's been a lack of funding for research, he said, but visionary philanthropists and funding agencies-among them the Gates Foundation-are changing the rules.
