Professor wins NSF Career Development Award

Joel Schneider, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry

2:42 p.m., Feb. 5, 2004--“You’ll get a kick out of this’’ is how Joel Schneider, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, introduces self-assembling peptides to an audience that has never taken even a high school chemistry class.

This assistant professor, who segues from layperson’s lingo to postdoctoral parlance with aplomb, recently received the prestigious Faculty Early Career Development Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF). One of NSF’s highest honors for new faculty, the award recognizes and supports the early career development activities of “those teacher-scholars who are most likely to become the academic leaders of the 21st century.”

The more than half-million-dollar NSF award will support Schneider’s research on the construction of new biomaterials, an approach that could eventually be used to grow and replace human tissue.

Schneider also is UD’s 2003 recipient of the Francis Alison Society’s coveted and competitive Young Scholars Award.

Admirers call Schneider a natural mentor who can shift mental gears to teach anyone how his de novo peptide design research works. The professor’s own take is much more modest: “I didn’t start out breaking the information down for anyone else. I think I did it because I wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. I would have to explain things to myself so they made more sense. That’s the God’s honest truth.’’

This from a researcher whose work has been published nine times in the prestigious Journal of the American Chemical Society, who did his postdoctoral work with the leading international experts in his field and who, with several other UD assistant professors, has attracted more than $9.7 million in funding since he came to Delaware five years ago. He recently spoke at the 2003 Gordon Research Conference on Bioorganic Chemistry, where talking time is reserved for top scientists conducting innovative studies.

Scientists around the world are watching the collaborative research Schneider and Darrin J. Pochan, assistant professor of materials science, are conducting on the construction of new biomaterials. The researchers design short segments of proteins called peptides so that they form responsive hydrogel materials--watery gels that form and dissolve in a predictable manner when exposed to light, heat or salt. The material’s properties can be controlled at the molecular level by controlling the folding and self-assembly of these peptides.

Their peptide-based materials could someday be used as staging grounds to grow a patient’s own tissue cells so they can be used to repair burned skin, or to grow bone cells for a patient with osteoporosis.

As Charles G. Riordan, chairperson of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry who nominated him for the Alison Young Scholars Award, said, “Joel’s scientific background has positioned him to make important and lasting contributions to the field of bioorganic chemistry.’’

Despite the importance and complexity of his research--it takes a grad student more than two years to understand the basic science--Schneider paints images in his audiences’ minds with sentences that might start with “Mother Nature makes...’’ or end with “That’s it in a nutshell.’’

When Schneider talks of a future when your own human cells are farmed on peptides and molded to fit into your body, he uses sentences like, “It’s like a cement, but it’s like a live cement. That’s what people are really going for these days.’’

He makes his fingers walk to illustrate how a cell would become acclimated to the peptide. “The cells kind of send out little feelers,’’ he said, wiggling his forefinger and middle finger on his desk.

And, when he explains how the cells begin to crowd each other, Schneider tightens his shoulders as if he were in a crowd.

While scientists around the world read his research, Schneider spends his off hours playing with his year-old son, Jack, or working on his home outside Newark with his wife, Jennifer.

Schneider said his real professional passion is to understand how molecular structure can be used to design molecular function.

After almost five years at the University, Schneider says the most gratifying experiences he’s had on campus haven’t been the successful grants or the prestigious publications. “To me, the most gratifying is when students display that they’ve become independent scientists,’’ he said.

“Every professor has his or her own way of training students. For the type of work we do, it takes the students a good two-and-a-half years to learn to use the tools to do the work. At that point, I take off the training wheels and allow them to drive. After I see how they do, I may ease off or I may become more involved. The creative juices really start to flow when the students start to direct their own research, and I’ve been blessed with some really creative students.”

The Francis Alison Young Scholars Award is presented annually to an assistant professor nominated by a department chair. The society consists of senior professors who have received UD’s Francis Alison Award, which is presented annually to an outstanding member of the faculty. Currently there are 22 members of the society, and they have donated funds to endow the Young Scholars Award.

Schneider’s work in understanding how and why peptides self-assemble may help shed light on more complex processes involving natural proteins. Gerard J. Mangone, society secretary and University Research Professor of International and Maritime Law, lauded Schneider for the possibilities inherent in his research. “Understanding the folding, misfolding and aggregation of natural proteins--processes involved in diseases like Alzheimer’s, mad cow and Lou Gehrig deterioration--could be of great importance to the medical and pharmaceutical disciplines,” Mangone said.

Photo by Kathy Atkinson

E-mail this article

To learn how to subscribe to UDaily, click here.