Brian Weaver

Brian received his B.S. in Biochemistry from Valparaiso University. During his undergraduate studies, he conducted research with Prof. Robert Clark (a former Burstyn graduate student). His undergraduate studies were focused on understanding allosteric activation of the heme-containing transcription factor, CooA. He also spent a summer working at Penn State in the lab of Prof. John Golbeck engineering Rhodobacter spharoides, a purple photosynthetic bacterium, to produce a non-native form of bacteriochlorophyll that adsorbs near-infrared light.

Since joining the Burstyn group, Brian has been collaborating with Lydia Perkins and Prof. Andrew Buller (https://buller.chem.wisc.edu) to optimize expression of cobalt-substituted hemoproteins in E. coli. Brian has worked towards characterizing the first coordination sphere of these cobalt-substituting proteins using a variety of spectroscopic techniques (Electronic absorption, Electron paramagnetic resonance, Magnetic circular dichroism). During his free time, Brian likes to watch movies and netflix, everything sports (particularly baseball), bake, do jigsaw puzzles and play with his cat, Hazelnut.