Lee G. Fradkin, PhD
Bio
Lee grew up in Detroit, MI, during a wonderful musical period called “Motown”. He received his BS at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and subsequently his PhD at UCLA, in Molecular Biology (“Eucaryotic mechanisms of transcription”). He engaged in two periods of postdoctoral research at Stanford University, the first focused on DNA replication in the lab of Arthur Kornberg, the second in Roel Nusse’s lab, where he began the functional characterization of the first Wnt protein shown to be involved in nervous system development. Following his academic training, he had a five-year career in two start-up gene therapy companies, the first employing the AAV viral vector, the second, non-viral vectors. He then returned to academia, running a lab in The Netherlands, studying developmental neurobiology, for 18 years. This work focused on the roles of a variety of Wnt- and Dystrophin Glycoprotein Complex-related molecules in nervous system development, specifically, in axon pathfinding and synaptic function. Upon his return to The States, he joined the lab of Mark Skylar-Scott (Stanford Bioengineering and the BASE Initiative) where, as a Senior Basic Life Science Research Scientist, he led the synthetic biology component of research in that lab and mentored undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and other staff. Most recently, in November 2023, he joined Stanford’s School of Medicine’s Proposal Development Office, where he helps Stanford PI’s, of varying degrees of experience, to develop their ideas into fundable grant proposals.