David Baker (biochemist)

David Baker ( born October 6, 1962 in Seattle ) is an American biochemist, professor of biochemistry at the University of Washington.

Baker studied at Harvard University and in 1989 received his doctorate at the University of California, Berkeley with Randy Schekman (via protein transport in wheat cells). 1990 to 1993 he was a post - doctoral fellow with David Agard at the University of California, San Francisco.

He is known for his work on protein folding, in particular ab initio protein structure predictions with the Rosetta algorithm, for which he he launched the Rosetta @ home project (as well as the Foldit project, an online competition for the best possible structural derivation of proteins ) which, in order to perform the necessary complex calculations with distributed computing. His laboratory regularly participates in CASP.

Baker has worked at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and a member of the National Academy of Sciences (2006) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2008 he received the Sackler Award, the 1994 Young Investigator Award of the National Science Foundation, the 2004 Newcomb Cleveland Prize of the AAAS and 2012 the Biochemical Society Centenary Award. In 2004 he was awarded the Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology.