Cheryl Kerfeld

Kerfeld is from Minnesota. She attended Glenwood High School, where she was a competitive athlete.[1] She competed in track and high jump, and remains a record breaking jumper for Minnesota State High School Girls' league.[2] Kerfled studied English literature and Biology at the University of Minnesota.[3] She remained there for a Master's degree in English.[4] She moved to the University of California, Los Angeles for her graduate studies.

Kerfeld and Markus Sutter remove a puck containing crystallized proteins at Berkeley Lab's Advanced Light Source in 2017.

After earning her doctorate, Kerfeld joined University of California, Los Angeles as an National Science Foundation (NSF) postdoctoral fellow, where she worked to improve the undergraduate biology curriculum, eventually establishing the Joint Genome Institute Genomics and Bioinformatics Education Program.[5] The program teaches faculty members specialising in science and engineering to use bioinformatics tools.[6] Her research has focused on the structure and function of modular carotenoid-binding proteins. Such proteins are involved in the self-assembly of metaboloic modules and the mediation of cyanobacterial photoprotection.[7] She looks to engineer protein-based assemblies for the development of nanodevice and next-generation biomaterials.[3]

In 2019, Kerfeld was appointed head of a National Science Foundation research program that looks to engineer a synthetic cell without lipids.[8][9] The fabrication of such a cell requires input from several scientific disciplines, including physics, chemistry, biology and materials science.[8] In particular, it looks to understand whether lipids are necessary for cellular development and function.[8] Beyond academia, synthetic cell factories are used for the production of solar fuels (i.e. photobiological hydrogen) and jet fuel.[10] Synthetic, lipid-free cells could allow for the engineering of cells based on only the desirable macromolecules, making it more simple to recover useful products.[8]

• 2011 American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Award for Exemplary Contributions to Education[11][12][13]
• 2019 Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science[14][15]

• Appel, Aaron M.; Bercaw, John E.; Bocarsly, Andrew B.; Dobbek, Holger; DuBois, Daniel L.; Dupuis, Michel; Ferry, James G.; Fujita, Etsuko; Hille, Russ; Kenis, Paul J. A.; Kerfeld, Cheryl A. (2013-06-14). "Frontiers, Opportunities, and Challenges in Biochemical and Chemical Catalysis of CO₂ Fixation". Chemical Reviews. 113 (8): 6621–6658. doi:10.1021/cr300463y. ISSN 0009-2665. PMC 3895110. PMID 23767781.
• Wu, Dongying; Hugenholtz, Philip; Mavromatis, Konstantinos; Pukall, Rüdiger; Dalin, Eileen; Ivanova, Natalia N.; Kunin, Victor; Goodwin, Lynne; Wu, Martin; Tindall, Brian J.; Hooper, Sean D. (2009-12-24). "A phylogeny-driven genomic encyclopaedia of Bacteria and Archaea". Nature. 462 (7276): 1056–1060. Bibcode:2009Natur.462.1056W. doi:10.1038/nature08656. ISSN 1476-4687. PMC 3073058. PMID 20033048.
• Shih, Patrick M.; Wu, Dongying; Latifi, Amel; Axen, Seth D.; Fewer, David P.; Talla, Emmanuel; Calteau, Alexandra; Cai, Fei; Marsac, Nicole Tandeau de; Rippka, Rosmarie; Herdman, Michael (2013-01-15). "Improving the coverage of the cyanobacterial phylum using diversity-driven genome sequencing". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 110 (3): 1053–1058. Bibcode:2013PNAS..110.1053S. doi:10.1073/pnas.1217107110. ISSN 0027-8424. PMC 3549136. PMID 23277585.