BioSketch

Dr. Blaber graduated with a B.A. in Biochemistry/Molecular Biology from the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1980. At the time, molecular biology was a new field, and UCSB was one of the few institutions that offered an undergraduate degree in this area. After graduation, Blaber was recruited by Genentech Inc. as a Research Assistant in Protein Chemistry. Genentech was one of the first biotech companies, and Blaber was the 120th employee. After five exciting years studying the properties of recombinant human proteins, Blaber left Genentech and entered the Ph.D. program in the Department of Biological Sciences in the College of Medicine at UC Irvine (in the laboratory of Dr. Ralph A. Bradshaw). During this time Blaber studied structure/function relationships of serine protease proteins, and was supported by an undergraduate NIH fellowship and an Earl C. Anthony dissertation fellowship. After graduating, Blaber was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the laboratory of Dr. Brian Matthews, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, University of Oregon where he was supported by an NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship to study protein structure and stability relationships. Upon completing his Postdoctoral work, Blaber joined the Department of Chemistry at FSU as an Assistant Professor, receiving a University Teaching Award in 1999 for undergraduate chemistry instruction. Blaber subsequently earned tenure in the FSU College of Arts and Sciences, and promotion to Associate Professor in 2000. In fall 2005 he joined the Department of Biomedical Sciences in the FSU College of Medicine. In 2006 he was tenured in the FSU College of Medicine, and in 2007 he was promoted to Professor, and also received the 2007 Outstanding Senior Faculty Researcher Award. In 2009 Blaber received the E.K. Frey/E. Werle Gold Medal for research in the area of Kallikrein-related peptidases. Blaber was awarded the 2013 Outstanding Senior Faculty Researcher Award. To date, 18 patents related to Blaber’s research have been awarded or are pending. Intellectual property derived from his research at FSU has been licensed to Trefoil Therapeutics Inc. and Lomir Biomedical Inc. A total of 8 Postdoctoral Fellows, 20 Graduate Students, 2 Medical Students, and 69 Undergraduate Students have been trained in his laboratory.