Stephen Mayo

Stephen L. Mayo is the Bren Professor of Biology and Chemistry and Merkin Institute Professor in the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He earned a B.S. in chemistry from Pennsylvania State University in 1983 and a Ph.D. in chemistry from Caltech in 1987. After completing his doctorate, Mayo returned to Caltech as a Senior Research Fellow from 1991 to 1992. He advanced through the faculty ranks as Assistant Professor from 1992 to 1998, Associate Professor from 1998 to 2003, Professor from 2003 to 2007, and has held the Bren Professor position since 2007. Mayo was an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute from 1994 to 2007. His administrative contributions include serving as Executive Officer for Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics from 2004 to 2007, Vice Provost for Research from 2007 to 2010, and Chair of the Division of Biology and Biological Engineering from 2010 to 2020, during which he held the inaugural William K. Bowes Jr. Foundation Division Chair from 2012 to 2020. In 2021, he was appointed Merkin Institute Professor.

In Biology, Mayo's research centers on computational protein design, enzyme design, protein sequence evolution, protein-protein recognition, and related areas such as the design of calcium-deficient calmodulin and continuum electrostatic solvation models for protein design. The Mayo laboratory couples theoretical, computational, and experimental techniques to advance the understanding of structural biology, with practical applications in developing advanced biofuels and human therapeutics. He developed the ORBIT software suite, enabling fully automated protein design. Key publications include "De novo protein design: fully automated sequence selection" (Science, 1997, with B.I. Dahiyat), which achieved the first fully automatic design of a novel protein that folds correctly, and "Iterative approach to computational enzyme design" (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2011). Mayo's pioneering work in protein design led to his election to the National Academy of Sciences in 2004, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2022, recognition as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and appointment by President Barack Obama to the National Science Board, where he served a six-year term starting in 2013. His innovations have profoundly impacted computational structural biology and protein engineering.

Professional Email: smayo@caltech.edu