Mark Styczynski, anassistant professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering atGeorgia Tech, has received a 2011 Defense Advanced Research Projects AgencyYoung Faculty Award for his research on metabolites, the small moleculebuilding blocks necessary for all cellular functions.

DARPA presents the YoungFaculty Award to outstanding junior faculty whose research will enablerevolutionary advances in the areas of the physical sciences, engineering, andmathematics. The Young Faculty Award program will fund Styczynski’s researchthrough 2013.

Styczynski’s work involvesidentifying millions of allosteric metabolite and protein interactions bothefficiently and accurately.

“Metabolites are one of themost direct, real-time readouts of cellular state that researchers can assay,” Styczynskisaid. “But they also play a significant regulatory role, which is only beginning to be understood on a large scale.”



Potential applications of Styczynski’sresearch fall into the division of DARPA known as the Defense Sciences Office, whichfocuses on developing technologies that will radically transform battlefieldmedical care. By cataloging the infinite number of metabolite-proteininteractions, his research may lead to the development of a self-regulatingdrug for soldiers in the field that shuts itself down when no longer needed.

Styczynski received hisPh.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2007. He joined the facultyat Georgia Tech in 2009 after a postdoctoral appointment at the BroadInstitute, a world-renowned genomic medicine research center located inCambridge, Mass.