Walter Chazin, Ph.D., received a B.Sc. in chemistry from McGill University in 1975 and a Ph.D. in chemistry from Concordia University in Montreal in 1983. He was a postdoctoral fellow in the lab of Kurt Wüthrich at the E.T.H. in Switzerland (2002 Nobel laureate in Chemistry). After 13 years on faculty in the Department of Molecular Biology at the Scripps Research Institute, he moved to Vanderbilt in 1999 where he holds the Chancellor’s Chair in Medicine as Professor in the Departments of Biochemistry and Chemistry.
Since joining Vanderbilt in 1999, Chazin has brought Vanderbilt to the forefront of integrative structural biology, growing our research community to more than 150 scientists. Chazin is the founding director of the Center for Structural Biology, the director of the chemical and physical biology Ph.D. program, and the molecular biophysics training program. The MBTP is sponsored by the CSB and an NIH T32 training grant.
In 2024, Chazin was named senior associate dean of biomedical research education and training. He has mentored ~100 graduate students and postdocs and ~30 undergraduate students in his 29 years as an independent investigator. He has published over 200 peer reviewed papers and 50 book chapters and reviews, and serves on a number of advisory committees and editorial boards. His honors include American Cancer Society Junior Faculty and Faculty Research Awards, serving as a National Academy of Science International Travel Fellow and NAS Teaching Fellow, Regents Visiting Professor at the University of Naples in Italy, and appointments as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Fellow of the Biophysical Society.