Bio
Soichi Wakatsuki is a Professor of Photon Science at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory where he recently initiated the Biociences Division, and Professor of Structural Biology, Stanford School of Medicine. He received his B.S and M.S. degrees in Chemical Engineering from University of Tokyo, and his Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from Stanford University in 1991. After postdoctoral studies on time-resolved x-ray crystallography of enzyme reactions in Oxford (1990 to 1994), he moved to Grenoble, France in 1994 to work at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility (ESRF) where he led Joint Structural Biology Group to develop high-brilliance x-ray crystallography beamlines and instruments, as well as several structural biology projects on protein transport. In 2000, Soichi moved back to Japan to start a new Structural Biology Research Center at KEK (High Energy Accelerator Research Organization), Tsukuba, Japan, and later served as Director of Photon Factory (national synchrotron radiation facility) from 2006 to 2012. There he further developed x-ray beamlines and a large scale protein crystallization system, led initiatives to start three national projects on structural proteomics. Fascinated by new research opportunities in integrative bioimaging at Stanford and the world’s first hard x-ray free electron laser (XFEL) at SLAC, Soichi returned to Stanford in 2013. Soichi’s research interests include structural biology of post-translational modification and vesicle transport, structural biology of polyubiquitin recognition, synchrotron radiation and XFEL instrumentation, protein crystallography and small angle X-ray scattering, integrative multi-scale bioimaging.
Academic Appointments
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Professor, Photon Science Directorate
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Professor, Structural Biology
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Member, Bio-X
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Faculty Fellow, Stanford ChEM-H
Administrative Appointments
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Group Leader, Macromolecular Crystallography Group, ESRF (European Synchrotron Radiation Facility) (1999 - 2000)
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Director, Structural Biology Research Center, KEK (High Energy Accelerator Research Organization) (2003 - 2012)
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Division Head, Life Science Division, Synchrotron Radiation Research Organization, University of Tokyo (2006 - 2008)
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Director, Photon Science, KEK (High Energy Accelerator Research Organization) (2006 - 2012)
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Associate Director, Institute of Materials Structure Science, KEK (High Energy Accelerator Research Organization) (2009 - 2012)
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Director of Biosciences Division, SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (2015 - Present)
Honors & Awards
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Prize for Science and Technology, by Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, The Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan (April 2011)
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The Research Award of Crystallographic Society of Japan, The Crystallographic Society of Japan (November 2006)
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Murata Overseas Studies Fellow, Murata Overseas Scholarship Foundation (1984-1987)
Boards, Advisory Committees, Professional Organizations
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Member of Neutron Advisory Board, Oak Ridge National Laboratory (2019 - Present)
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Chair of Science Advisory Committee, SOLEIL Synchrotron, France (2017 - Present)
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Co-Editor of Acta Crystallographica D, Structural Biology, International Union of Crystallography (2017 - Present)
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Member of NSLS-II Science Advisory Committee, Brookhaven National Laboratory (2016 - Present)
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Member of Scientific Advisory Board, BioXFEL (2015 - Present)
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Member of Scientific Leadership Council, Stanford Bio-X (2015 - Present)
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Member of Committee of Visitors, Biological Systems Science Division, Biological and Environmental Research, Department of Energy (2014 - 2014)
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Section Editor of Acta Crystallographica D, Structural Biology, International Union of Crystallography (2013 - 2017)
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Member of Science Advisory Committee of Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (2013 - 2015)
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Editorial Board Member of Current Opinions on Structural Biology, Elsevier (2012 - Present)
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Chair of world-wide PDB Advisory Committee, World-Wide Protein Data Bank (2012 - 2014)
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Member of Science Advisory Committee, National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center, Taiwan (NSRRC) (2011 - 2014)
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Member of Science Advisory Committee, Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, SLAC (2011 - 2012)
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Member of Scientific Advisory Committee, Advanced Photon Source (APS), Argonne National Laboratory (2008 - 2014)
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Member of Science Advisory Committee, Australian Synchrotron (2008 - 2012)
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Chair of IUCr (International Union of Crystallography) Commission on Synchrotron Radiation, IUCr (2008 - 2011)
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Advisory Committee Member, Astellas Foundation for Research on Metabolic Disorders (2007 - Present)
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Member of Science Advisory Board, JCSG, Joint Center for Structural Genomics (JCSG) (2006 - 2010)
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Member of Science Advisory Committee, Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, SLAC (2006 - 2008)
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Co-Editor of Journal of Synchrotron Radiation, IUCr (2005 - 2013)
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Member of IUCr (International Union of Crystallography) Commission on Synchrotron Radiation, IUCr (2005 - 2008)
Professional Education
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B.S., University of Tokyo, Chemical Engineering (1982)
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M.S., University of Tokyo, Chemical Engineering (1984)
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Ph.D., Stanford University, Chemistry (1991)