Center for Global Health and Inter-Disciplinary Research
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Lee Woodcock
Contact Info
Biography
H. Lee Woodcock received degrees in Chemistry and Biology from Appalachian State University, and completed a Ph.D. in Computational Quantum Chemistry in 2003 at the University of Georgia under the direction of Professor Henry F. Schaefer. Dr. Woodcock was awarded a fellowship for post-doctoral studies at the National Institutes of Health, where he worked with Dr. Bernard Brooks on the development and application of general multi-scale methods with particular focus on hybrid quantum mechanical/molecular mechanical (QM/MM) techniques to study reaction mechanisms and their associated free energies. This work led to numerous publications and awards: a Lenfant Biomedical Fellowship; National Heart, Lung, and Blood Fellows Retreat Research Award; and ultimately a K22 Career Transition Award. At the University of South Florida, Dr.Woodcock has continued development of QM/MM approaches and their application towards solving problems that exist at the interface of chemistry, biology, and materials. He co-led a structural and engineering study of PETase: a PET (polyethylene terephthalate) digesting enzyme. This work had a major impact on the international attention paid to this environmental problem. Evidence of this impact is demonstrated by the inclusion of Dr. Woodcock's paper on this among the top 100 most impactful scientific articles published in 2018 (www.altmetric.com/top100/2018/). He is continuing work in this area with the goal of engineering improved enzymes and/or bacteria that can become key technologies in upcycling and ultimately lead to a truly circular economy. Dr. Woodcock has been serving as the Program Chair for the American Chemical Society (ACS) Computers in Chemistry Division since 2015.