Team Bio

Nathan Ennist, Avi Swartz and Peik Lund-Andersen make up the de novo photosystem team at the Institute for Protein Design. Nate brings 12 years of experience in bioenergetics and protein design, Avi contributes a deep background in computer science, and Peik is cultivating his expertise in inorganic chemistry and potentiometry. The team came together in 2022 to work on their grand vision of developing new proteins for high-efficiency photosynthesis for enhanced production of food and biofuels.

Nathan Ennist

Nathan Ennist, Ph.D. is an Acting Instructor doing research in the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Washington. As part of David Baker’s group at the Institute for Protein Design (IPD), Nate mentors Ph.D. students Avi Swartz and Peik Lund-Andersen, and together they work to design new proteins for high-efficiency photosynthesis. Nate first joined the Baker group as a postdoc in 2017, when he started working on chlorophyll binding proteins for light harvesting and charge separation. Nate employs cutting edge computational protein design methods to create multi-cofactor proteins for energy transfer and electron transfer. Nate wrote a grant proposal on behalf of the Baker group for an Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA-E) award for a project titled, “Harvesting Infrared Light to Improve Photosynthetic Biomass Production” which was funded for $1,347,122 over 3 years starting March 28, 2022. Nate has published on the de novo design of photochemical reaction center proteins and chlorophyll dimer proteins that precisely mimic the structures of native chlorophyll special pairs found in photosynthetic reaction centers (preprint).

Nate completed his Ph.D. in 2017 at the University of Pennsylvania in the lab of Prof. P. Leslie Dutton, where he designed and characterized photochemical reaction centers and oxygen transport proteins. In the Dutton group, Nate developed expertise in protein redox chemistry, anaerobic techniques, metalloprotein design, X-ray crystallography, transient absorption spectroscopy, and other spectroscopic methods.

Nate’s long-term career goal is to become a professor to continue mentoring students and working to build more efficient photosynthetic pathways for enhanced production of food and renewable fuels.

Peik Lund-Andersen

Peik Lund-Andersen obtained a B.S in Molecular Biology from the University of Idaho, where he conducted research using molecular modeling and molecular dynamics simulations to probe protein-protein and protein-small molecule interactions. While there he won the prestigious Goldwater Scholarship for his work identifying possible animal reservoirs of COVID-19. Peik is now a second year Molecular Engineering graduate student working under David Baker at the University of Washington’s Institute for Protein Design. His current work involves designing redox active proteins to assemble photochemical reaction centers. During his PhD he aims to gain an in-depth understanding of biological electron transport and bioinorganic chemistry. His long term goal is to engineer proteins for the sustainable production of fuels and other valuable chemicals.

Avi Swartz

Avi Swartz’s experience is primarily in computational techniques and structural biology: his undergraduate degree was in computer science at Harvard University, and while there he performed term time research in developing machine learning architecture to disentangle protein evolution and structural information from metagenomic multiple sequence alignments.

Avi is now a third year graduate student in Molecular and Cell Biology, working under David Baker in the Institute of Protein Design at the University of Washington. In his Ph.D., Avi aims to continue developing his computational skills while also learning the experimental biochemistry as well as the physics and chemistry necessary to test his computational designs. After earning his Ph.D., Avi plans to continue in the academic track with a focus on using these computational protein design skills on meaningful biological problems.