Channing R. Robertson - Professor

Office: Terman 214
Phone: (650) 723-3936
FAX: (650) 725-8545
E-Mail: chanbo@stanford.edu
Admin. Associate: (650) 723-3936

Professorships/Deanships/Fellowships

• Ruth G. and William K. Bowes Professor in the School of Engineering
• Yumi Yasunori Kaneko Family University Fellow in Undergraduate Education
• Senior Associate Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs in the School of Engineering

Highest Degree

• Ph.D., Stanford University, 1970

Major Honors and Awards

• The Stanford Associates Award
• The Stanford Associates Centennial Medallion Award
• The Richard W. Lyman Award
• Fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering

Research Area

Our research is concerned with the behavior of proteins at or near solid interfaces. Because of the wide range of issues that require confrontation, it is multidisciplinary. The phenomenon of proteins encountering surfaces is ubiquitous yet poorly understood. Problems include mass transfer of proteins to and from the interfacial region, the association of proteins with the surface, surface mobility, subsequent surface aggregation and surface reactivity. In particular we study the reactivity of enzymes interacting with substrate surfaces using microfluidic devices coupled with techniques such as surface plasmon resonance, surface plasmon enhanced fluorescence, ellipsometric imaging and quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation. We also study polymer-protein interactions in flowing solutions as a means to understand the role that macromolecular architecture, molecular charge and hydrophobic/hydrophilic character plays in these kinds of phenomena.

Several Recent Publications

1. Increasing Dialysate Flow and Dialyzer Mass Transfer Area Coefficient to Increase the Clearance of Protein-bound Solutes, Timothy W. Meyer, Evonne C. Leeper, Derek W. Bartlett, Thomas A. Depner, Yiming Zhao Lit, Channing R. Robertson and Thomas H. Hostetter, J. Am. Soc. Nephrology, 15, 1927-1935 (2004).
2. Helical Crystallization on Lipid Nanotubes: Streptavidin as a Model Protein, Thanh Dang, Sammy Farah, Alice Gast, Channing Robertson, Bridget Carragher, Edward Edelman and Elizabeth Wilson-Kubalek, J. Struct. Biol., 150, 90-99 (2005).
3. Simultaneous Measurement of Enzyme Surface Diffusion and Surface Reaction Using Microfluidic Patterning of Substrate Surfaces, Shaunak Roy, Jerry M. Thomas, Elizabeth A. Holmes, James T. Kellis Jr., A.J. Poulose, Channing R. Robertson and Alice P. Gast, J. Anal. Chem., 77, 8146-8150 (2005).
4. The Clearance of Protein-Bound Solutes by Hemofiltration and Hemodiafiltration, Timothy W. Meyer, Jason L. Walther, Maria Enrica Pagtalunan, Andres W. Martinez, Ali Torkamani, Patrick D. Fong, Natalie S. Recht, Channing R. Robertson and Thomas H. Hostetter, Kid. Int., 68, 867-877 (2005).
5. Downloadable Computer Models for Renal Replacement Therapy, Jason L. Walther, Derek W. Bartlett, Wilson Chew, Channing R. Robertson, Thomas H. Hostetter and Timothy W. Meyer, Kid. Int., 69, 1056-1063 (2006).

Student Group

Predoctoral—Undergraduate Institution

• Dennis Yancy—BS MIT
  Avoiding mass transport limitations in hydrophobic biotransformations by efficient cell localization
• Bobby Feller—BS U. Illinois
  Performance of surface plasmon resonance/surface plasmon enhanced fluorescence microfluidic surface assays using variant protease enzymes and Langmuir Blodgett protein films
• Joe Hardesty—BS
  Surface plasmon resonance/surface plasmon enhanced fluorescence and quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation of surface substrates exposed to lipases, amylases, and cellulases