Office: 410 Atwood
Email: k.salaita@emory.edu
Khalid Salaita is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Chemistry, and Director for Graduate Studies in the Chemistry Department at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia (USA). Khalid grew up in Jordan and moved to the US in 1997 to pursue his undergraduate studies at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, Virginia (USA). He worked under the mentorship of Prof. Nancy Xu studying the spectroscopic properties of plasmonic nanoparticles. He then obtained his Ph.D. with Prof. Chad Mirkin at Northwestern University (Evanston, IL) in 2006. During that time, he studied the electrochemical properties of organic adsorbates patterned onto gold films and developed massively parallel scanning probe lithography approaches. From 2006-2009, Khalid was a postdoctoral scholar with Prof. Jay T. Groves at the University of California at Berkeley (USA) where he investigated the role of receptor clustering in modulating cell signaling. In 2009, Khalid started his own lab at Emory University, where he is currently investigating the use of nucleic acids as molecular force sensors, smart drugs, and synthetic motors. In recognition of his independent work, Khalid has received a number of awards, most notably: the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the Camille-Dreyfus Teacher Scholar award, the National Science Foundation Early CAREER award, the Kavli Fellowship, and Merck Future Insight Prize. Khalid is currently the director of the Center on Probes for Molecular Mechanotechnology, and an Associate Editor of SmartMat. Khalid’s program has been supported by NSF, NIH, and DARPA.
See Khalid's CV and video interview for more details.
Biography
Degrees
Ph.D., Northwestern University 2006
Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of California, Berkeley, 2006-2009
Specific Research Area
Biophysical, Materials, Nanoscience, Biomolecular Chemistry
Selected Publications
Nature Methods, 2016, 13, 143–146, "Nanoscale Optomechanical Actuators for Controlling Mechanotransduction in Living Cells.”
Nature Nanotechnology, 2016, 11, 184–190, "High-speed DNA-based rolling motors powered by RNase H.”
Journal of the American Chemical Society, 2016, in press, "A General Approach for Generating Fluorescent Probes to Visualize Piconewton Forces at the Cell Surface."
Angewandte Chemie, 2016, in press, "The Mechanically-induced Catalytic Amplification Reaction for Readout of Receptor-Mediated Cellular Forces.”
Courses
CHEM 260: Analytical Chemistry
CHEM 301: Biochemistry
CHEM 360: Instrumental Analysis
CHEM 571: BioMolecular Chemistry (grad)
Awards and Honors (selected)
Merck Future Insight Prize (2023)
Kavli Fellow (2016)
Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (2014)
NSF Early CAREER Award (2014)
Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow (2013)