Prior to joining the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1998 Dr. Plaxco received his Ph.D. from Caltech and performed postdoctoral studies at Oxford and the University of Washington. Dr. Plaxco has co-authored more than 180 papers on protein folding, protein dynamics, folding-based biosensors and folding-based smart materials. He has also co-authored a popular science book on Astrobiology and more than a dozen patents. He is actively involved in the commercialization of the novel technologies emerging from his laboratory and serves on the scientific advisory boards of a half dozen companies.