Wayne Curtis' Profile

• Pennsylvanian thoroughbred. Eternal college kid. Intense. Invented Selfies. Do what I loves: plants, biology, engineering, & teaching. Lives for innovation, creativity, and fun. Pennsylvania born-and-raised, I graduated first in my class--the first graduating PSU Schreyers class---in 1984 in Chemical Engineering, although I had initially enrolled in Biochemistry ironically to avoid pursuing graduate school. As it turns out, I love learning and teaching so I went on to graduate school and never looked back. Though technically receiving my Ph.D. at Purdue in Chemical Engineering, I completed my work on scale-up of (opium) poppy physically within its Horticulture Department. I came back to Penn State (if you check the dates closely, I even graduated two graduates students while I was setting up my lab and writing my own Ph.D. dissertation). My initial tenure-track position was a dual teaching position and directorship, where I oversaw the now-defunct Biotech Institute or what-is-now the $20M+ Shared Fermentation Facility. This included spending ~5 years assisting with industrial projects, including hosting workshops for more than a decade that served over 1,000 industrial participants. In that time, I scaled-up...anything and everything, where I now feel comfortable tackling growth of nearly any organism. Noting that CurtisLab has easily worked with more than 50 organisms to date, here are some examples:yeast;

• CHO;

• HeLa;

• parasitic nematodes;

• edible, mycorrhizal, and entomopathogenic fungi;

• plants;

• microalgae and cyanobacteria;

• syngas-fermenting, autotrophic, and even magnetotactic bacteria;

Thus, rather than narrowing my work to one (myopic) field of expertise, this experience enabled me to leapfrog into multiple disciplines i.e. Plant Science and Biomedical Engineering---in which I am an Adjunct Professor of both---under the larger umbrella of bioreactor design. CurtisLab's research focuses on biofuels, plant propagation, and protein expression and I am a proponent of undergraduate research, where I believe that it is the true validation of a research university. Over the years,

• Over (400) undergraduates have conducted research in my lab;

• (47) honors theses have been written

• (6) winners of National undergraduate research awards

• At least a dozen conference research poster competitions

• (5) recipient of NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP)

• PI/co-PI of NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) for 5 years

• (6) students completed summer internship via Brazilian Scientific Mobility Program (BSMP)

• Graduates that have gone onto faculty positions, veterinary school, medical school, and successful careers in industry (Merck, Astra Zeneca, Regeneron, DOW Agrosciences)

In the 1990s, I also helped to put together the Bioprocess Engineering option with Arthur Humphrey and have taught over 1,000 undergraduates aspects of biochemical/biomolecular engineering.

Activities/Hobbies:

Think that undergraduate research is the true validation of a research university ... and have had about 400 undergraduates conduct research in my lab over the years. They have won awards at about a dozen undergraduate research competitions.

I am a happily-married father of four (all graduated or currently enrolled at PSU). In my spare time, I (apparently) try to kill himself rock-climbing, getting run over by PSU police on my bike (true story), hiking, climbing trees I shouldn’t (in the name of arboreal taxonomy of course!), rocking on guitar, playing frisbee, and things I can’t admit without self-incrimination.