Adam Hitchcock

Professor

Biointerfaces Institute related research: My group investigates interfaces in biological systems (e.g. peptide and protein interactions with lipid membranes), as will as interfaces between biological entities (proteins, peptides and lipids) with synthetic and natural polymers in the context of biomaterials optimization. Our main tool is synchrotron based spectromicroscopy, of 2 variants: Scanning Transmission X-ray Microscopy (STXM) and X-ray Photoemission Electron Microscopy (X-PEEM). Over the past decade 3 PhD students have graduated in the area of biomaterials studies. Other members of the BioInterfaces Institute are welcome to contact me if there is potential to advance their research using these synchrotron techniques. At present, together with Prof. Jose Moran-Mirabal, I co-supervise graduate student Jonathan West. His project is to investigate the mechanism of action of cationic antimicrobial peptides by testing the hypothesis that a major factor is charge attraction to the negatively charge lipid membranes of bacteria. We will be using BI instrumentation (XPS, Raman etc) as part of the characterization of this systep. As editor of the Journal of Electron Spectroscopy and Related Phenomena, which has a long history of reporting on advances in photoelectron and related spectroscopies, I encourage members of BI to consider publishing in this journal, for projects where the XPS and XPS imaging capabilities of BI are a significant component.