Alexei Savchenko

Title 

Chair, Microbial Research Group

Associate Professor, Department of Microbiology/Immunology & Infectious Diseases (MIID)

Adjunct Associate Professor, Department of Biochemistry & Molecular Biology

Contact Information:

University of Calgary

Cumming School of Medicine

HRIC 2C66

3330 Hospital Drive NW

Calgary, AB T2N 4N1

Phone: 403-210-7980

Email: alexei.savchenko@ucalgary.ca

Curriculum Vitae:

Associate Professor (September 2016 – Present), Department of Microbiology, Immunology and Infectious Diseases, Cummings School of Medicine, University of Calgary

Associate Professor (status only) (June 2011 - Present), Dept. of Chemical Engineering and Applied Chemistry, University of Toronto, Canada, Toronto, ON, Canada.

Alexei Savchenko completed his undergraduate studies in Molecular Biology at the Yerevan State University (Armenia) and a Ph.D. thesis in Molecular Microbiology at the Université de Nantes (France).  After postdoctoral training in Protein Biochemistry at Michigan State University (USA), Alexei became one of the founding members of the structural genomics group at the University of Toronto.  There he focused on development of streamlined methodologies for the large-scale structural and functional characterization of structurally non-annotated protein families in microbial genomes. Since then Dr. Savchenko’s group has contributed to the determination of over 700 de novo protein structures by X-ray crystallography and to the functional annotation of a large number of bacterial virulence factors, essential gene products, antibiotic resistance proteins and novel microbial enzymes of biotechnological relevance.

Dr. Savchenko remains a key player in international structural genomics effort. His group participates in two National Institutes of Health (NIH, US) funded multicenter structural genomics consortiums – Midwest Centre for Structural Genomics (www.mcsg.anl.gov) and Center for Structural Genomics of Infectious Diseases (www.csgid.org), where it primarily contributes to structural and functional characterization of proteins involved in bacterial pathogenesis. Dr. Savchenko’s research is also funded by Ontario Research Fund, CHRP, NSERC and Genome Canada.

Currently Dr. Savchenko’s research projects involves structure/function studies of proteins secreted by pathogenic bacteria inside their eukaryotic hosts using type 3 or 4 secretions systems, bacterial enzymes involved in resistance to antibiotics and fungal and bacterial enzymes involved in degradation of carbohydrate biomass.