Bio

Professor Sears has been on the faculty at the University of California Santa Barbara campus since 1977 following completion of his postdoctoral studies on the biochemistry of murine MHC antigens in Stanley Nathenson's laboratory at Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Prior to this, he earned his Ph.D. in Biophysical Chemistry at Columbia University where he analyzed the kinetics of immunoglobulin heavy and light chain assembly for his doctoral thesis studies in Professor Sherman Beychok's laboratory, sparking his life-long interest in immunology. Since arriving at UCSB, the unifying theme of his research projects has been the analysis of various immunologically-related cell killing mechanisms. This work is underscored by a fundamental interest in understanding the function-structure relationships of proteins as reflected in the instructional web sites he has developed for his protein biochemistry and immunology courses.