AUBURN – Dr. Raymond Stevens, a 1981 graduate of Edward Little High School, is a professor of molecular biology and chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., where his research is focused in the area of structural neurobiology.

Prior to joining Scripps in 1999, Stevens was a professor of chemistry and neurobiology at the University of California, Berkeley.

He obtained his B.A. degree from the University of Southern Maine with Professor John Ricci, his Ph.D. in inorganic/organic chemistry with Professors Robert Bau and George Olah at the University of Southern California, and conducted his postdoctoral research in structural biology with Professor William Lipscomb in the chemistry department at Harvard University.

Stevens has published more than 170 peer-reviewed publications and more than 30 patent applications in the past 10 years, focusing primarily in the area of structural biology and structure-based drug discovery, including the design of TamiFlu and PEG-Phenylase.

Stevens has received numerous awards in the area of structural biology, including the Sidhu Award, the National Science Foundation’s Presidential Young Investigator Award, Beckman Foundation’s Young Investigator Award, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory Outstanding Performance Award, Jouan Robotics Award and the USC Alumnus of the Year Award.

Due to a critical need for technological advancements in the structural biology area, Stevens has founded the Joint Center for Structural Genomics, the JCSG Center for Innovative Membrane Protein Technologies, Syrrx and MemRx Corp.

The two academic efforts helped to develop some of the first useful nanovolume crystallization/imaging robotics systems, expression/purification technologies, and the JCSG solved more than 100 novel protein structures this past year, enabling new biological insight into the organism “thermotoga maritima.”

The latter two companies, Syrrx and MemRx, have focused on accelerating structure-based drug discovery. In early 2005, Syrrx advanced a type II diabetes drug into Phase II clinical trials after initiating the program only two years earlier. Through the efforts, Stevens has been involved in more than 350 protein structure determinations (not including co-crystal structures), the majority of which are bacterial and human enzymes representing a significant number of major enzyme classes.