Biophysicist Pernilla Wittung-Stafshede and computational biochemist Linna An have joined the Wiess School of Natural Sciences' faculty thanks to recruitment grants from the Cancer Prevention and Research Institute of Texas (CPRIT).
Wittung-Stafshede joins Chemistry as a full professor and CPRIT Scholar thanks to a $6 million Recruitment of Established Investigators grant from the state cancer agency. She previously served as an associate professor of biosciences at Rice from 2004-08 and comes to Rice from Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, where she served as a professor of chemical biology since 2015.
Wittung-Stafshede’s research investigates molecular mechanisms of disease, particularly the role of copper-binding proteins in cancer metastasis. Such proteins are essential for normal cellular function, and her work has shown they can also inadvertently aid in the spread of cancer cells.
“By understanding how copper proteins contribute to metastasis, we hope to identify targets that could potentially stop cancer from spreading,” she told Rice News in June.
An joins Biosciences as an assistant professor and CPRIT Scholar thanks to a $2 million grant for Recruitment of First-Time, Tenure-Track Faculty Members. A former Ph.D. student of Wiess School 2025 Distinguished Alumni Award winner Wilfred van der Donk ’94 at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, An comes to Rice from the University of Washington’s Institute for Protein Design, where she helped pioneer new methods for generating synthetic proteins that act as biosensors.
“My background is in biochemistry and computational protein design, and I work on creating proteins that can bind to and interact with small molecules, many of which play critical roles in the body, including in disease states such as cancer,” An told Rice News in June.