Walter Chazin, PhD

Director, Center for Structural Biology

Chancellors Professor of Medicine

Departments of Biochemistry and Chemistry

Vanderbilt University School of Medicine

and College of Arts and Science

Walter Chazin is the Director of the Center for Structural Biology and the Molecular Biophysics Training Program. After completing his PhD in physical chemistry at Concordia University in Montreal and a postdoctoral fellowship in Molecular Biophysics un der Kurt Wuthrich (2002 Nobel Prize in Chemistry) at the ETH in Zurich, Switzerland, he was recruited to the Scripps Research Institute where he held a faculty position for 12 years. He was recruited to Vanderbilt in 1999 to design and lead a new program in integrated structural biology. He had developed a broad range of research interests spanning from fundamental studies of the dynamics of proteins to the mechanisms of action of genome maintenance machinery. He is a leading expert in the structural biology of EF-hand calcium binding proteins, and in the past 15 years has been exploring the mechanisms for how intracellular calcium signals alter the gating properties of cardiac ion channels, particularly voltage gated sodium channels.

Chazin has trained nearly 100 graduate students and postdocs in his 28 years as an independent investigator. He has published more than 200 peer reviewed papers and 50 book chapters and reviews, and serves on a number of advisory committees and editorial boards. Holder of many honor and awards, he most recently was named a Fellow of the Biophysical Society.