Brian Fox

Brian Fox, PhD, is the Chair of the Department of Biochemistry in the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, and the Marvin J. Johnson Professor in Fermentation Biochemistry. He is a co-investigator at the Great Lakes Bioenergy Research Center, a cross-disciplinary research center led by UW–Madison and funded by the DOE. He also directs the Biotechnology Training Program at UW–Madison, a pre-doctoral training program funded by the NIH to provide opportunities for graduate students to engage in cross-disciplinary study and industrial biotechnology research. BTP was instrumental in the creation of the Graduate School’s Industry Internship Pilot Program, which provides opportunities for graduate students in the life sciences to gain practical experience in a real-world setting.

Brian Fox’s research goals are to define the structure and the reactivity of the active site diiron center, to probe the catalytic contributions of the active site protein residues, and to determine the consequences of protein-protein and protein-substrate interactions on the outcomes of enzymic catalysis. More specifically, he is interested in determining the molecular details of catalytic reactions involving Delta 9D and T4MO. These soluble, multicomponent enzymes utilize dioxygen and NADPH to catalyze the oxidation of hydrocarbons.

Fox earned his Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from Carleton College in 1981 and went on to earn his PhD in Biochemistry at the University of Minnesota in 1989.