Recommendation for Lirong Chen

Office of the Dean, Franklin College of Arts and Sciences
University of Georgia, Athens GA 30602

To Whom it May Concern:

I write in enthusiastic support of the candidacy of Dr. Lirong Chen for the position of Associate Research Scientist in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Georgia. I am a faculty member at Illinois Institute of Technology and a consulting crystallographer at Southeast Regional Collaborative Access Team (SER-CAT) at Argonne National Laboratory. My research foci are in methods development for macromolecular crystallography, primarily in software creation and synchrotron beamline instrumentation. I have never been a collaborator of Dr. Chen, although I have met him numerous times and occasionally provided user support for experiments from his group at SER-CAT. I believe that I can judge his qualifications for the position of Associate Research Scientist based on his publication record and my first-hand impressions of him at SER-CAT.

Dr. Chen is both a talented and dogged methods developer in macromolecular crystallography and an entirely competent structural biologist. The papers he has coauthored that emphasize determinations of novel macromolecular structures and their significance to biology and human health make it clear that he has an impressive talent for understanding and interpreting protein structures. Most of his first- and last-authored papers are, however, associated with development of novel methods for determining structures. He has played a critical role in UGa's development of experimental and analytical techniques for determining structures reliably and rapidly. He has been a leader in perfecting tools for determining structures by sulfur anomalous phasing, and in using single-wavelength anomalous techniques effectively in a software-pipeline environment. He is aggressive in seeking collaborators whose projects can provide appropriate challenges for the techniques he is developing, and he is a tireless experimenter once those projects are underway.

Given his first-rate publication record and the energy and determination that he shows in experimental work, Dr. Chen is entirely qualified to take on the role of Associate Research Scientist. I support his nomination for that position wholeheartedly.