Walter Scott, Jr. College of Engineering

Christopher (Chris) Snow, Associate Professor in the Chemical and Biological Engineering department in the Walter Scott, Jr. College of Engineering, January 15, 2019

Chris Snow

Professor, Chemical & Biological Engineering

Dr. Christopher Snow joined the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering in 2011, and has proceeded to join the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the Department of Chemistry, the School of Biomedical Engineering, the Cell and Molecular Biology Program, and the School of Advanced Materials Discovery.

Dr. Snow received a B.S. degree in Chemistry from MIT in 2001 and his Ph.D. in Biophysics from Stanford University in 2006. As a Howard Hughes fellow at Stanford, Dr. Snow studied the biophysics of protein folding using distributed computing. Before arriving at CSU, Dr. Snow was a Jane Coffin Childs Fellow and a KAUST Research Fellow at Caltech where he developed software for computational protein engineering, designed libraries of cellulase enzymes, and studied protein recombination using high-throughput crystallography.

Contact Information

Resources

Research Interests

At CSU, Dr. Snow leads a research group focus on computer-guided molecular engineering. Most projects in the group fall into two large categories. Category 1 includes the design and engineering of individual proteins or enzymes. Category 2 includes the design and engineering of crystalline assemblies.

Diverse application areas of interest include structural biology, catalysis, information storage, biosensors, biomaterials for therapeutic delivery, intracellular imaging, synthetic biology for olfactory signaling, and novel affinity reagents.

Methods of particular interest include directed evolution, macromolecular crystallography, protein structure prediction, and new algorithms for reliable computational protein engineering.

Education

  • MIT, 1997-2000

  • Stanford, 2001-2006

  • Caltech, 2006-2011

Honors and Awards

  • Nelson Family Faculty Excellence Award 2019
  • CSU Alumni Association Best Teacher Award 2019
  • George T. Abell Outstanding Early Career Faculty Award 2015

Other appointments

  • Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology
  • Department of Chemistry
  • School of Biomedical Engineering
  • School of Advanced Materials Discovery
  • Cell and Molecular Biology Program