Cheryl Kerfeld is the Hannah Distinguished Professor of Structural Bioengineering at the MSU-DOE Plant Research Lab and the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Michigan State University.  The Kerfeld Group  is focused on structural synthetic biology, specifically on the structure, function and engineering of light-harvesting antennae, modular carotenoid-binding proteins that mediate cyanobacterial photoprotection and in self-assembling metabolic modules in bacteria, with the goal of repurposing these protein-based architectures into nanodevices and biomaterials for applications including catalysis, bioremediation, biomining and therapeutics.  Professor Kerfeld received her B.A. in Biology and English from the University of Minnesota, an M.A. in English Literature from the University of Minnesota via the Regents’ Scholars Program, and a Ph.D. in Biology from UCLA. She also holds appointments in the Environmental Genomics and Systems Biology and the Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging Divisions of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.