Professor R.A.Mathies

Professor Richard Mathies is now emertius professor of chemistry at the University of California (UC) at Berkeley. His early work at UC was on the use of resonance Raman and time-resolved optical spectroscopy to elucidate the structure and reaction dynamics of energy and information-transducing photoactive proteins called rhodopsins. His work on the Human Genome Project led to the development of high-throughput platform technologies including capillary array electrophoresis and energy transfer fluorescent dye labels for DNA sequencing and analysis. He has also pioneered the development of microfabricated capillary electrophoresis devices, capillary array electrophoresis microplates and microfabriated integrated sample preparation and detection methods. The primary application of these technologies is now directed to in situ instruments for detecting chemical signs of life in our solar system especially the icy moons Enceladus and Europa.