Charles DeLisi
Charles DeLisi (2006).
Born (1941-12-09) December 9, 1941
Bronx, New York, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
Alma materCity College of New York (BA)
New York University (PhD)
Known for
SpouseLynn DeLisi (m. 1968; div. 2006)
PartnerNoreen Vasady-Kovacs (2011 - )
Awards
Scientific career
FieldsBiomedicine
Institutions
ThesisThermally Induced Transitions in Collagen (1970)
Doctoral advisorMorris Shamos[5]
Doctoral students
Itai Yanai[7]
Websitewww.bu.edu/eng/profile/charles-delisi-ph-d/

Charles Peter DeLisi (born December 9, 1941) is an American biomedical scientist and the Metcalf Professor of Science and Engineering at Boston University. He is noted for major contributions to the initiation of the Human Genome Project,[8][9] for transformative academic leadership,[10] and for research contributions to mathematical and computational immunology,[11] cell biophysics,[12] genomics[13][7] and protein[14] and nucleic acid[15][16] structure and function. Recent activities include mathematical finance[17] and climate change.[18]

Early life and education

DeLisi was born in the Bronx, graduated from City College of New York (CCNY) with a Bachelor of Arts degree in history (1963), and received his Ph.D. in physics (1965 -1969) from New York University (NYU).[19]

Career and research

In 1969, he joined Donald Crothers’ laboratory as a National Institutes of Health (NIH) postdoctoral research fellow in the department of chemistry at Yale University. In 1972, he was appointed a theoretical division staff scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, where he collaborated with George Bell, a theoretical physicist who a few years earlier had begun pioneering research in mathematical immunology. DeLisi was subsequently appointed senior scientist (1975–1982) at the National Cancer Institute, NIH, and founding head of the Section on Theoretical Immunology (1982–1985), where he and his collaborators established one of the earliest protein and DNA sequence databases fully integrated with machine learning programs for functional inference[13] and developed a number of analytical methods that proved useful in cell biology.[11][20][14]

In 1986, as director of the U.S. Department of Energy's (DOE) Health and Environmental Research Programs, DeLisi and his advisors proposed the Human Genome Project to the White House Office of Management and Budget and the Congress. The proposal created much controversy but received strong endorsement from Alvin Trivelpiece, who was chief of DOE's Office of Science, and William Flynn Martin, the Deputy Secretary of Energy. It was included in President Ronald Reagan's fiscal year 1987 budget submission to the Congress and was approved subsequently by both the House of Representatives and the Senate, the latter with the essential endorsement of Senator Pete Domenici (R, NM). During the spring of 1987, shortly before leaving the DOE, DeLisi established an ethical studies component of the Project.[21] The goal was to reserve 3-5% of the funding for scholars of the humanities and social sciences to develop a system of ethics that would inform decisions about the development and deployment of the radically new technologies destined to emerge from the completion of the Project.

In addition to the medical and scientific advances engendered by the Human Genome Project, it and its progeny have had a profound effect on research of cell biology. Computer scientists, in particular, transformed the topic and created a record of discovery destined to provide much material for studying the sociology of late 20th and early 21st century science. Computational and mathematical methods are now considered as important to progress in cell biology, a change that is forcing even the most conservative universities to develop new methods of biological education.[22] The Human Genome Project enabled a rapid transformation of DOE's health, environmental and energy programs, increasing considerably the importance of the Office of Health and Environmental Research.

Commemorating the significance of the Human Genome Project, the DOE installed a bronze plaque outside room F-202 at its Germantown, Maryland facility. The plaque is imprinted:[9]

From this room the Human Genome Project evolved from a mere concept to a revolutionary research program through the vision and determination of Dr. Charles DeLisi, Associate Director of Energy Research for Health and Environmental Research, 1985 to 1987.

In 1987, DeLisi returned to New York as a professor and department chairperson at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine.[23]

Boston University years

In 1990 DeLisi joined Boston University (BU) as dean of the College of Engineering.[24] Under his watch the College grew into a leading research institution, adding among other things Centers for Biotechnology, Photonics and Manufacturing Engineering.[25] In addition, the Biomedical Engineering (BME) department added a new dimension to the field, namely molecular and cellular engineering, and was the home of the seminal research in synthetic biology.[26]

In 1999 DeLisi initiated the nation's first Ph.D. program in bioinformatics and served as chairperson for more than a decade.[27]

In 2000, after 10 years as dean, DeLisi resumed a full-time faculty position as dean emeritus and Metcalf Professor. The lobby of the building that houses the College of Engineering Dean's Office is named in his honor,[28] as is an annual College of Engineering award lecture.[29]

DeLisi is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). In 1999 he was awarded the CCNY Townsend Harris Medal, in 2011 he was elected an honorary citizen of Marineo, Palermo, Italy,[30] and in 2019 he was recipient of the Informa Clinical and research excellence lifetime achievement award.[31]

References

  1. ↑ DeLisi, Charles (2008). "Santa Fe 1986: Human genome baby-steps". Nature. 455 (7215): 876–877. doi:10.1038/455876a. ISSN 0028-0836. PMID 18923499. S2CID 41637733.
  2. ↑ DeLisi, C.: Physical-Chemical and Biological Implications of Receptor Clustering. In DeLisi, C., and Blumenthal, R. (Ed.): Physical Chemical Aspects of Cell Surface Events in Cellular Regulation. New York, Elsevier, North Holland, 1979. ISBN 0444003118, 9780444003119.
  3. ↑ Human Genome News (Genomics.energy.gov) Vol.11, No. 3-4, July 2001.
  4. ↑ Bevatron’s Encyclopedia of Inventions: a compendium of technological leaps, ground break discoveries and scientific breakthroughs that changed the world. The Human Genome Project, Charles DeLisi, pp 360-362, ISBN 9781780873404.
  5. ↑ "Physics Tree - Morris Herbert Shamos". academictree.org.
  6. ↑ Weng, Zhiping (1997). Protein-ligand binding: Effective free energy calculations (PhD thesis). Boston University. OCLC 38760266. ProQuest 304338123.
  7. 1 2 Yanai, I., Derti, A., and DeLisi, C. Genes linked by fusion events are generally of the same functional category: A systematic analysis of 30 microbial genomes. PNAS, v 98, 7940-7945, 2001
  8. ↑ "President Clinton Awards the Presidential Citizens Medals". clintonwhitehouse5.archives.gov. Retrieved 2020-09-05.
  9. 1 2 CharlesDeLisi (2002-03-01), English: A tribute to the person who launched the Human Genome Project, retrieved 2020-08-30
  10. ↑ "Charles DeLisi, Ph.D. | College of Engineering". www.bu.edu.
  11. 1 2 DeLisi, C.; Berzofsky, J. A. (1985). "T-cell antigenic sites tend to be amphipathic structures". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 82 (20): 7048–7052. Bibcode:1985PNAS...82.7048D. doi:10.1073/pnas.82.20.7048. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 391307. PMID 2413457.
  12. ↑ DeLisi, C., and Blumenthal, R. (Ed.): Physical Chemical Aspects of Cell Surface Events in Cellular Regulation. New York, Elsevier, North Holland, 1979
  13. 1 2 Kanethisa, Minoru; Klein, Petr; Greif, Peter; DeLisi, Charles (1984). "Computer analysis and structure prediction of nucleic acid and proteins". Nucleic Acids Research. 12 (1Part1): 417–428. doi:10.1093/nar/12.1Part1.417. ISSN 0305-1048. PMC 321015. PMID 6546426.
  14. 1 2 Klein, Petr; Kanehisa, Minoru; DeLisi, Charles (1985). "The detection and classification of membrane-spanning proteins". Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) - Biomembranes. 815 (3): 468–476. doi:10.1016/0005-2736(85)90375-X. ISSN 0005-2736. PMID 3838905.
  15. ↑ DeLisi, C. and Crothers, D.M., Prediction of RNA Secondary Structure, Proc Nat Acad. Sci, 68, 2682-2685, 1972
  16. ↑ Nakata, K., Kanehisa, M., DeLisi, C. Prediction of Splice Junctions in mRNA, Nucleic Acid Research, 13(14), 5327-5340, 1985
  17. ↑ "Team". De Novo Analytics.
  18. ↑ DeLisi, C., Patrinos, A., MacCracken, M., et al The Role of Synthetic Biology in Atmospheric Greenhouse Gas Reduction, AAAS BioDesign Research, Volume 2020 |Article ID 1016207 | https://doi.org/10.34133/2020/1016207
  19. ↑ Charles DeLisi at the Mathematics Genealogy Project
  20. ↑ Cornette, J. L.; Margalit, H.; Berzofsky, J. A.; DeLisi, C. (1995). "Periodic variation in side-chain polarities of T-cell antigenic peptides correlates with their structure and activity". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 92 (18): 8368–8372. Bibcode:1995PNAS...92.8368C. doi:10.1073/pnas.92.18.8368. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 41158. PMID 7667297.
  21. ↑ Robert Cooke-Deegan, Gene Wars, p 262, W. H. Norton, New York, 1994.
  22. ↑ C DeLisi, A Time to Abandon Hedgehogs, Genome Technology, 2001.
  23. ↑ DeLisi, Charles (1988). "The Human Genome Project: The ambitious proposal to map and decipher the complete sequence of human DNA". American Scientist. 76 (5): 488–493. ISSN 0003-0996. JSTOR 27855388.
  24. ↑ "BU Theta tau brochure" (PDF). www.thetatauarchives.org. Retrieved 2020-07-25.
  25. ↑ "Charles DeLisi | College of Engineering". www.bu.edu. Retrieved 2020-09-05.
  26. ↑ Gardner, Timothy S.; Cantor, Charles R.; Collins, James J. (January 2000). "Construction of a genetic toggle switch in Escherichia coli". Nature. 403 (6767): 339–342. Bibcode:2000Natur.403..339G. doi:10.1038/35002131. PMID 10659857. S2CID 345059.
  27. ↑ "Boston University's Legacy in Computational, Systems and Synthetic Biology » Computational Genomics Lab | Boston University". sites.bu.edu. Retrieved 2020-09-01.
  28. ↑ "BU Theta tau brochure" (PDF). www.thetatauarchives.org. Retrieved 2020-07-25.
  29. ↑ "Distinguished Alumna Delivers DeLisi Lecture | College of Engineering". www.bu.edu. Retrieved 21 January 2021.
  30. ↑ "Deliberation documents" (PDF). win.comune.marineo.pa.it. 2011. Retrieved 2020-07-25.
  31. ↑ "CARE Awards 2019 winners l Pharma Intelligence". www.pharmaintelligence.informa.com. Retrieved 21 January 2021.
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