Akif Tezcan is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and a member of the Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) Program and the Institute of Materials Discovery and Design at UCSD.  He was educated at the German High School in Istanbul, Macalester College in St. Paul, MN (BS in Chemistry and Biology) and Caltech in Pasadena, CA, USA (PhD in Bioinorganic Chemistry with Harry Gray), followed by postdoctoral research at Caltech as a Helen Hay Whitney fellow (with Doug Rees). His research program at UCSD, started in 2005, focuses on developing new chemical tools and strategies to study biological nitrogen fixation, to design functional proteins and enzymes, and to create new protein-based materials.  He was a recipient of the Early Career Award from the Society of Biological Inorganic Chemistry in 2014.