Robert W. Newberry, Ph.D.

Dr. Newberry grew up in the Houston area wanting to be a professional musician.  After realizing that he instead wanted a career that would offer a lifetime of learning and discovery, he decided to follow his interests in the fundamental bases of life and how biological phenomena are ultimately encoded in the properties of molecules.

 

Dr. Newberry received his undergraduate education from The University of Texas at Austin, where he performed research in the labs of Eric Anslyn and Lauren Webb.  He also performed summer research with Donovan Haines at The University of Texas at Dallas, Henry Strobel at The University of Texas at Houston, and Eva Zubia at the University of Cadiz in Spain.

​

Dr. Newberry's undergraduate research in physical organic chemistry and biophysics led him to pursue graduate training with Ron Raines at the University of Wisconsin-Madison as an ACS Graduate Fellow.  There, he used a combination of synthetic, analytical, and computational chemistry to probe the chemical determinants of protein secondary structure.  Dr. Newberry was also selected as an HHMI Teaching Fellow and taught a first-year undergraduate research methods course based on science news in popular media.

​

After receiving his Ph.D., Dr. Newberry undertook postdoctoral training in biophysics with Bill DeGrado at the University of California, San Francisco.  There, he established a new collaboration with Martin Kampmann to use genetic approaches to probe protein misfolding in living cells.  He also developed and led a project-based course for first-year biophysics and bioinformatics graduate students.

​

While at UCSF, Dr. Newberry received the NIH's Pathway to Independence Award, which supported his return to UT Austin as an assistant professor. The Newberry lab launched in early 2022 to investigate the molecular details of protein misfolding and the diseases it causes.