John Katsaras

Bio

John joined ORNL as Distinguished R&D staff-Biological Systems and is currently leading the Soft Matter Sample Environments effort in Neutron Scattering Division.

John has a broad academic background that has enabled him to develop, lead, collaborate, and successfully conduct interdisciplinary research for the past 30 years using different scattering (light, x-rays, and neutrons) and biophysical (calorimetry, spectroscopies) techniques, combined with computer simulations. He and his former student, Norbert Kučerka (Frank Laboratory of Neutron Physics, Russia), developed the Scattering Density Profile that accurately determines the structural parameters of model membrane systems, including the areas per lipid used by computer simulators to refine their simulation force-fields. Over the past 15 years, John with his students and colleagues developed neutron scattering approaches to detect nanoscopic lipid domains and carried out the first-ever measurements showing their existence in fully viable bacteria.

Since 1998, John has supervised numerous postdoctoral students who have gone on to have significant scientific careers of their own as professors at universities and staff scientists/directors at national labs/government agencies, and who are known, both nationally and internationally, for their own scientific contributions and achievements. He has presented over 200 invited talks (14 plenary/keynote lectures) and reviewed for a wide range of journals and scientific organizations. Currently, he is associate editor for Chemistry and Physics of Lipids and on the editorial board of Biochimica et Biophysica Acta - Biomembranes and Membranes. John is fellow of the Neutron Scattering Society of America and the American Institute for Medical and biological Engineering.