Rate My Professor Blake Hill

Blake Hill, PhD, serves as Professor and Chair of the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences in the Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, a role he began in January 2024. He earned his PhD in Biophysical Chemistry from Yale University in 1995 as a Frederick W. and Elsie L. Heyl graduate fellow. Hill completed postdoctoral training in protein design and engineering at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, supported by NIH and George W. Raiziss fellowships. Following his bachelor's degree from Kalamazoo College, he worked at a major pharmaceutical company developing in vitro and in vivo models for oral bioavailability of peptide drugs. He joined the faculty at Johns Hopkins University in 2000, launching an NIH-funded research program on the molecular basis of mitochondrial homeostasis, and moved to the Medical College of Wisconsin in 2012 to advance translational applications of this work. At Johns Hopkins, he led the design and construction of a university-wide Nuclear Magnetic Resonance facility, and at the Medical College of Wisconsin, he developed drug discovery resources shared across the institution. Hill has served in leadership roles on Ethics, Financial, and Governing committees of a national scientific society and is an Editorial Board Member for the Journal of Biological Chemistry.

The Hill Lab investigates protein regulation of mitochondrial homeostasis in healthy and diseased cells, emphasizing fission and fusion proteins such as Drp1 and Fis1, Bcl-2 family interactions during apoptosis, and amphitropic proteins that reversibly bind membranes. Using yeast, worm, and mammalian systems alongside genetic, biochemical, biophysical, and structural methods including NMR and x-ray crystallography, the research elucidates disease-causing mutations and conserved mechanisms implicated in neurodegeneration, cardiomyopathies, and cell death. Notable contributions include demonstrating separable functions of Bcl-2 proteins in apoptosis and mitochondrial dynamics, identifying Fis1 auto-inhibition of Drp1, and developing high-throughput screens for protein interaction hotspots. Key publications are 'Mitochondrial fission protein 1: emerging roles in organellar form and function in health and disease' (Frontiers in Endocrinology, 2021), 'NMR identification of a conserved Drp1 cardiolipin-binding site essential for stress-induced mitochondrial fission' (PNAS, 2021), and 'Mitochondrial fission proteins regulate programmed cell death in yeast through Drp1 recruitment to the mitochondrial outer membrane' (Genes & Development, 2004).