Anne Skaja Robinson became Head of Carnegie Mellon University’s Department of Chemical Engineering in 2018 and Trustee Professor of Chemical Engineering in 2019. Prior to her current appointment, she served as Chair of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Boh Professor of Engineering at Tulane University. She started her academic career at the University of Delaware, where she ultimately became a Full Professor and Associate Chair in Chemical Engineering. Having received both her B.S. and M.S. in Chemical Engineering from Johns Hopkins University, and her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Robinson has earned many honors, including a DuPont Young Professor Award, and a National Science Foundation Presidential Early Career Award for Science and Engineering. She is also a fellow of both the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers.
Dr. Robinson’s research focuses on three primary areas of bioengineering: expression and characterization of integral membrane proteins, especially G-protein coupled receptors; understanding and controlling protein aggregation; and cellular mechanisms controlling protein quality and human disease. She holds several patents and has published over 90 times in the areas of protein refolding and aggregation, protein biophysics, and expression of therapeutically relevant protein molecules.