Christy Landes
Assistant Professor of Chemistry
Dr. Landes' website
Christy Landes, originally from Churchville,Virginia, joins Rice as a new assistant professor in the Chemistry Department. Landes is currently conducting research to try to understand what role complexity, in the form of redundant and competing pathways, serves in higher order protein function such as signaling and ion transport. She wants to use this information to better understand ways to improve synthetic analogs.
About her research, Landes goes on to say: “It’s fascinating to me that for eons longer than humans have thought to even wonder about transduction components, nature has been busily manufacturing charge storage/release mechanisms from the cheapest of precursors. We are starting to understand that one reason nature can be so successful is that her strategy differs from ours. Whereas humans usually design materials with a single, well-defined function, nature often acts through redundant or degenerate channels that are singly not as efficient, but collectively, and in the face of damage or wear, outperform their synthetic cousins.”
Her research has the potential to solve one of the most important challenges we face—engineering cheap, efficient, storage devices for alternative energy sources.
She is collaborating with Prof. Vasanthi Jayaraman at UTHSC, Prof. Richard Willson from the UH College of Engineering, Prof. Gobet Advincula from the UH College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. Dr. Rob Gorelick from the National Cancer Institute’s AIDS vaccine program, Prof. Dima Makarov from UT Austin.
Landes finds inspiration in her colleagues, especially her fiancé, Stephan Link, (Assistant Professor, Chemistry) “who challenges me every day to learn something new or do something better,” as well as history’s examples of perseverance in the face of adversity.
Landes was attracted to Rice because it is renowned for its interdisciplinary excellence, and also for its proximity to the Texas Medical Center.
In her spare time you might find her on the tennis court, reading, or paying the guitar.