User:David Wade

I am interested in many aspects of natural science. Most of my professional experience has been in biochemistry, particularly medical biochemistry, and related areas of both biology and chemistry. However, my reading and hobby interests in science extend beyond the fields of biology and chemistry, and include physics.

I am also very interested in the people and institutions associated with the Nobel Prize. This interest originated with family stories about two Nobel Prize winners, Guglielmo Marconi (1909, Physics), with whom a family member had a personal encounter, and Albert Einstein (1921, Physics), who lived and worked in Princeton, N.J., not far from my family homestead. It was nurtured by my early undergraduate college experience where the first reading assignment was the book, The Double Helix, written by 1962 Nobel Laureate in Medicine, James D. Watson. My first meeting with a Nobel Laureate was with Hamilton O. Smith (1978, Medicine) in 1982 at Princeton University, and I have met many more since that time. My postdoctoral research training included: work with R.B. Merrifield, 1984 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, at Rockefeller University in New York City; work at Stockholm University with H.G. Boman, a microbiologist and pioneer in the field of innate immunity (antimicrobial peptides) and a Nobel Prize nominee; work with S. Orrenius, an apoptosis researcher and former chairman of the Nobel Committee for the Medicine Prize at Karolinksa Institutet (K.I.), the Swedish institution whose faculty select the winners of the Nobel Prize in Medicine. The postdoctoral work with Merrifield resulted in several publications, some of which are frequently cited by other scientists, and also a patent for the invention of a new class of antibiotics. I have attended three Nobel Prize Award ceremonies at the Concert House in Stockholm (1996, 1997, 2000), and also the announcement of the 2000 Nobel Prize in Chemistry at the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences. During my working visit to Stockholm University, I was given a private tour of the Stockholm City Hall facilities, where the banquets are held after the yearly Noble Prize award ceremonies, including the huge kitchen where the food is prepared. While I was a faculty member in the Dept. of Biochemistry, Kuwait University-Faculty of Medicine (1998-2000), I was given the opportunity to make a nomination for the Nobel Prize in Medicine. My contacts with K.I. continue to this day.

In 2002, I started the nonprofit corporation, Wade Research Foundation (WRF), as a means to expand my activities in scientific research, development, and education. I currently serve as the director of WRF, and manage the publication of the Wade Research Foundation Reports, which is available online, and indexed and abstracted by EBSCO Academic Search Complete. In addition to the work for WRF, I am a visiting scientist in the Dept. of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, at Rutgers University, Piscataway, New Jersey. I also serve as a manuscript reviewer for scientific journals, and a grant application reviewer for a Canadian governmental agency.

All of my compulsory education, elementary and secondary, was obtained in the public schools of Somerset (Franklin Township), New Jersey. My higher education was obtained in a mixture of public and private institutions [B.S., Biology, Delaware Valley College, Doylestown, PA; M.S., Biochemistry, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Teaneck, NJ; Ph.D., Biochemistry, 1988, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey (UMDNJ)]. My undergraduate education was of a premedical nature, as my goal was to eventually attend medical school and become a physician. My M.S. thesis supervisor was Thomas Freund, an excellent biochemist and calcium metabolism researcher who introduced me to Rockefeller University. My Ph.D. supervisor was Chung S. Yang, a well known cancer researcher, head of the Laboratory for Cancer Research at Rutgers University, and also chairman of the Dept. of Chemical Biology, School of Pharmacy, at Rutgers. I did eventually have the opportunity to attend medical schools, however, fate had other plans for me (see Nobel experiences above), and I ended up becoming a biomedical scientist.

At the time of this writing, I have 14+ years of international, postdoctoral research training and teaching experience, including: the training with R.B. Merrifield, H.G. Boman, and S. Orrenius mentioned above; 8 years of international experience (Canada, Sweden, Finland, Kuwait); over 40 published research articles, including several with the Nobel Laureate and with the former chairman of the Nobel Committee; 35 invited lectures in 7 countries; an assistant professorship in the Dept. of Biochemistry, at the Kuwait University-Faculty of Medicine; adjunct instructorships in chemistry (general, organic, and biochemistry) and microbiology in three central New Jersey community colleges (Brookdale Community College, Middlesex County College, Raritan Valley Community College).