EIGER FELLOW 2006-2008

Jammin' on the sax back in Syracuse...

CURRENT ENDEAVOURS

Dr. Crosby is a postdoctoral fellow in the laboratory of Theodorus Gadella at the Swammerdam Institute for Life Sciences, University of Amsterdam, with whom he did his internship in spring of 2008.

EDUCATION

Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA
Ph.D., Biological Sciences, 2008

Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY
M.A., International Relations, 2002            

Mary Washington College, Fredericksburg, VA
B.A., History, 1998  

Northern Virginia Community College, Annandale, VA
A.A., Music, 1996

ADVISOR

Professor Brenda Winkel , Department of Biological Sciences

DISSERTATION RESEARCH

            Thankfully, very little is known of this nefarious character, and much that is said of his past is full of conjecture and hyperbole. His first confirmed sighting is reported to have taken place at 3:18 am on March 27th, 1999 as he emerged, disheveled, from the Bleecker Street subway station, engrossed in a rather dog-eared copy of Georges Perec's La Vie mode d'emploi and carrying a suspiciously shaped brown paper bag under one arm. 
            A few years later, on the formally quiet and pastoral campus of Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, an errant night watchman regrettably left one of the doors to the Fralin Biotechnology Center unlocked and slightly ajar, allowing the entry and eventual residence of this unsavory protagonist in the space occupied by Brenda Winkel’s research group.  Resigned to his unshakable presence, Brenda overruled the vociferous objections of many of the more rational members of the laboratory, and acquiesced to allowing this scourge to become one of her graduate students. 
            When asked about his research, Kevin is more likely than not to stumble into a series of incoherent ellipses on Aristotelian notions of organization, Democritus’s thinking on natural processes, and paradigms of atomism-mechanism versus organicism.  However, more grounded observers have tended to conclude that he is studying the sub-cellular organization of multi-protein complexes and their functional significance, using the flavonoid biosynthetic enzymes in Arabidopsis as a model system.  The purpose of his work seems to be directed towards demonstrating that there is a high degree of organization of the macro-molecules that is required as the basis for cellular function and that a crucial aspect of metabolism is the assembly of biosynthetic enzymes into macromolecular complexes, sometimes referred to as metabolons. Furthermore, he seems to think that these metabolons can then function to concentrate chemical substrates, channel potentially toxic intermediates between enzymes, regulate flux between competing branches of the pathway, and deliver products to where they are needed within the cell.   However, this is all conjecture, as most will admit, in all honesty, that they are never really sure what he is up to.

CONTACT INFORMATION

kccrosby@vt.edu

Page last updated 11/10/09