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John Wesley Powell Research Conference

2014 John Wesley Powell Research Conference Keynote

Paul Black, Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Translational Radiation Oncology at Wake Forest Baptist Health, will give the keynote address, “The Long Road to Exciting Results: New Discoveries in DNA Charge Transport.”

As a researcher at Wake Forest University, Black's training crosses physics, biology, and chemistry, focusing on radiation chemistry.

Black attended the College of William and Mary from 2003-2007 and earned a bachelor of science degree, with honors, majoring in physics. At William and Mary he pursued honors research in magnetic resonance under the supervision of Professor Todd Averett. After graduating from William and Mary, he began his graduate education at the University of Rochester in the summer of 2007.

He pursued research in ionizing radiation damage to DNA and protein, using magnetic resonance techniques to characterize free radicals in organic molecules under the supervision of Professor William Bernhard. He received his master of science degree in biophysics from the University of Rochester in March, 2009.

Black has been invited to speak at five separate conferences, with subjects ranging from DNA nano-filtration to charge transport properties of DNA to the possible influence of ionizing radiation on the origin of life on Earth.

He has received multiple travel awards to attend conferences both within the United States and abroad. In 2007, he received the University of Rochester’s Deans Award. In 2011, he received the William F. Neuman Award and was awarded the Neuman Biophysics Travel Grant to attend the International Congress of Radiation Research meeting in Warsaw, Poland. He was the Biophysics and Structural Biology student representative from 2009 to 2010 and was on the organizing committee for the BSB retreat in 2010.

In addition, Black has served as a session chair at the Radiation Research Society meeting in 2010. He had the honor of serving as the chair of the Gordon Research Seminar on Radiation Chemistry in July, 2012.