Invited Speakers

Plenary Speakers

Haribabu Arthanari, Ph.D, Department of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Pharmacology, Harvard University




Charles D. Schwieter, Director of the Computational Biomolecular Magnetic Resonance Core, NIDDK, NIH







Invited Speakers

Ernesto Fuentes, Ph.D. Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Iowa











Katherine Henzler-Wildman, Ph.D., Department of Biochemistry, University of Wisconsin – Madison







Robert Powers, Ph.D., Department of Chemistry, University of Nebraska – Lincoln.

Dr. Robert Powers is a Charles Bessey Professor of Chemistry at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Director of the Systems Biology core facility within the Nebraska Center for Integrated Biomolecular Communication and is on the scientific advisory board for Olaris Therapeutics, Inc and Nexomics Biosciences, Inc. Dr. Powers received his BA from Rutgers University, a Ph.D. in chemistry from Purdue University, and was an IRTA postdoctoral fellow at NIH. Prior to UNL, Dr. Powers was the Associate Director for the Protein NMR group at the pharmaceutical company, Wyeth. Dr. Powers is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Current Metabolomics, was a board member of the Metabolomics Association of North America, a member of the Metabolomics Quality Assurance & Quality Control Consortium, is on the Editorial Board of Nature Scientific Reports and 6 other journals, is an AAAS fellow, and recipient of the ACS Outreach Volunteer of the Year and an ACS Chemistry Ambassador. He has written over 195 peer-reviewed manuscripts, 7 book chapters, is an inventor on 10 patents, and has given over 180 invited lectures.


Beat Vogeli, Ph.D., Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, University of Colorado, Anschutz Medical Campus.

Beat Vögeli specializes in the development and application of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) techniques to explore conformation and communication networks within and between proteins and nucleic acids. His current primary research interests include investigating functional disorder in microtubule-based intracellular transport and dynamics and functions of Z-form RNA and DNA. He earned his Ph.D. from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zürich, pursued research at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, and now is an associate professor at the University of Colorado at Denver – Anschutz Medical School.


Nicholas Levinson, Ph.D., Department of Pharmacology, University of Minnesota – Minneapolis










Smita Mohanty, Ph.D., Department of Chemistry, Oklahoma State University

Smita Mohanty received a PhD degree in Chemistry in 1988 from University of Delhi, India. She did postdoctoral studies in Structural Biology especially protein NMR at the University of Washington, Seattle and Albert Einstein College of Medicine in New York. She joined the faculty of State University of New York at Stony Brook, New York from 1999-2005. She was an Associate Professor at Auburn University from 2006-2014. She is currently a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Adjunct Professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Oklahoma State University (http://mohantylab.okstate.edu).  Dr. Mohanty received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists & Engineers (PECASE), and POWRE award from NSF. Dr. Mohanty is an Executive Editor of the journal Biochemistry & Physiology; Editor of Journal of Biochemistry & Biotechnology; Editorial Board Member of the Journal of Metabolomics & System Biology and Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Journal.  Dr. Mohanty takes a multidisciplinary approach to characterizing the structure, and function of both globular and membrane associated proteins involved in various critical biological functions with an overall objective of understanding the molecular basis of function for exploiting these as new targets for the design of inhibitors.