Karl J. Schweighofer

Karl J. Schweighofer Mail Stop 239-4 Moffet Field, CA 94035 (650)604-5766 (650)604-1088 FAX

I received my first bachelors degree in biochemistry and cellular biology from the University of California at San Diego in 1985. I worked as a research associate in the laboratories of Inder Verma in the molecular biology and virology labs at the Salk Institute, and Michael Oldstone at Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla CA. In 1990 I received a second BS in chemical physics from U.C.S.D., and went on to a Ph.D. in chemistry at U.C. Santa Cruz. I graduated in 1995 from Ilan Benjamins research group. I accepted a post-doctoral fellowship in the department of chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1995, and worked on simulations of water-metal and water-surfactant systems with Max Berkowitz until 1997 when I relocated back to the bay area. My first association with Ames Research Center was via a visiting scientist position through the department of pharmaceutical chemistry at U.C. San Francisco, where I worked in the research group of Andrew Pohorille. Our focus was on simulations of biological membranes, and ion channels, and in computational biology. After three years at Ames, I accepted a position as a bioinformatics scientist with Incyte Pharmaceuticals in Palo Alto CA. I returned to Ames in 2001 to help establish a genomics resource.

My research interests range from theoretical studies of dynamical processes at interfaces, to computational biology and genomics. Some of the interfacial studies include ion transfer across liquid-liquid and liquid-vapor interfaces, structure and dynamics of water near metallic interfaces, and charged monolayer systems. I have also been involved in studies of ion channels in biological membranes, and in the interactions of small molecules with lipid bilayers using molecular dynamics simulations. 

In the field of genomics, my interests are in methods to classify biological sequences, and in expression analysis and microarray design. I am currently involved in a collaborative research project to develop microarrays to perform studies of functional diversity in environmental samples, and in the identification and phylogeny of organisms in such samples. Another of my responsibilities is as the chief scientist of the NASA Center for Astrobioinformatics, a genomics resource supporting NASA missions and research. 

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