Biochemistry Graduate Program

About Casey Van Stappen

Casey Van Stappen received his B.S. (2011) and M.S. (2013) degrees from the University of Minnesota, Duluth working in the lab of Viktor N. Nemykin. He performed his doctoral studies at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion (MPI-CEC) with Prof. Dr. Serena DeBeer together with the joint guidance of Prof. Dr. Frank Neese and Dr. Eckhard Bill. His research involved the use of advanced physical inorganic methods, including photon-in/photon-out X-ray spectroscopies, electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy, magnetic circular dichroism, and ⁵⁷Fe Mössbauer spectroscopy together with computational methodology to investigate bioinorganic problems, with particular focus on nitrogen fixation. Following his doctoral thesis (2019, Ruhr-Universität Bochum) and a wrap-up postdoctoral phase at the MPI-CEC, he joined Prof. Yi Lu at The University of Texas at Austin (2021) as an NIH F32 Ruth L. Kirschstein-NRSA postdoctoral fellow to study rational protein design, DNAzymes, and biocatalysis.

For his independent career at IU, Prof. Van Stappen's research will bridge the fields of chemical biology and catalysis together with inorganic and physical chemistry to generate novel insights into challenging chemical reactions, addressing key problems in biological energy conversion, greenhouse gas remediation, and fine chemical synthesis. Members are afforded the opportunity to build diverse skill sets, including (but not limited to) computational approaches, biophysical techniques, biochemical methods, and advanced spectroscopy.