Scholarship and Biography
David J. DeRosier (born on February 22, 1939) is The Abraham S. and Gertrude Burg Professor of Life Sciences emeritus in the Biology Department at Brandeis University. With Aaron Klug, he is known for introducing, implementing, and applying the method of three dimensional reconstruction of macromolecular structures from electron micrographs.
DeRosier received his B.S. degree in physics from The University of Chicago in 1961, and his Ph.D. in biophysics from The University of Chicago in 1965, where he worked in the laboratory of Robert Haselkorn. He did his postdoctoral research with Aaron Klug at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology, Cambridge, England from 1965 to 1969.
In 1969, he joined The Department of Chemistry at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was promoted to Associate Professor in 1972. In 1973, he joined The Structural Biology Laboratory in the Rosenstiel Basic Medical Sciences Research Center and The Physics Department at Brandeis University, where he was promoted to full professor in 1978. In 1979, he moved from the Physics Department to the Biology Department at Brandeis, where he remained until his retirement in 2005. He was Chairman, Science Council, Brandeis University, 1983-84 and Chairman, Department of Biology, Brandeis University, 1984-87. He was Director, W.M. Keck Institute for Cellular Visualization, 1996-2009. During his career he developed and applied methods of extracting structural information from electron micrographs of viruses, enzyme complexes, bacterial flagella, and the actin cytoskeleton. Following his retirement in 2005, he developed a super-resolution cryogenic fluorescent light microscope in collaboration with Gina Turrigiano, Professor of Biology, Brandeis University.
DeRosier received a Career Development Award from the National Institutes of Health (1970-73). He was a Guggenheim Fellow (1987-88). He received a MERIT Award from The National Institutes of Health (1990-2000). He was a Miller Visiting Professor at UC Berkeley (2000).
DeRosier was an Associate Editor, Journal of Molecular Biology, 1988-93. He served on the Editorial Board, Structural Biology Series, Addison-Wesley, 1983-86; the Editorial Board of The Journal of Cell Biology, 1988-91, 1996-1999; and the Editorial Board, Current Opinion in Structural Biology, 1990-2006.
DeRosier was on the Advisory Committee, High Voltage Microscope, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, 1991-2014, the Advisory Board for STEM Facility at Brookhaven National Laboratories, 1998-2005, the Advisory Board of the Consortium for Cell Migration, 2001 - 2010, advisory board, 3D-EM Network of Excellence (Europe), 2004 - 2009, Advisory Board - Protein Complex Analysis Project, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratories, 2006-2011, Chair of User project evaluation committee for the Stanford SLAC CryoEM National Center, 2018 – present, and Member of the Visual Proteomics Steering Council of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, 2021 -2022.
In 1993, he received the Elisabeth Roberts Cole Award from Biophysical Society, in 2001 The Alexander Hollaender Award from the National Academy of Sciences, in 2006 the Distinguished Service Award from the University of Chicago Alumni Association, and in 2013 The Distinguished Scientist Award, The Microscopical Society of America.
He was elected a fellow of The American Association for the Advancement of Science (1993), a fellow ofThe American Academy of Microbiology (1993), a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2001), a fellow of the Biophysical Society (2002), a Member National Academy of Sciences (2003), and a fellow of the Microscopical Society of America (2013).