"He [Bishop] is going to bring a lot of enthusiasm to combinaturial synthesis-a new area within organic chemistry-that we and the students are all looking forward to," said Professor of Chemistry Patricia O'Hara, who is chair of the department.
Bishop will teach organic chemistry at the College.
His research interests involve using chemistry to understand biological problems. Most of his work has focused on understanding how cells send messages from the cell membrane to the nucleus (signal transduction) and how cells make new proteins (translation).
"I am looking forward to all aspects of my teaching career at Amherst," said Bishop. "I am particularly excited about teaching laboratory classes and leading undergraduate research in my laboratory, because the lab is where students have the opportunity to really learn the exhilaration of doing science."
Bishop's position at the College will be his first faculty job. He was a teaching assistant at Princeton University and the University of California at San Diego (UCSD), where he taught chemistry discussion sections and office hour sessions.
He also worked as a curriculum consultant for the Core Knowledge Foundation, where he created lesson plans, laboratories and examinations for a class designed to give elementary school teachers essential knowledge of chemistry.
As a postdoctoral fellow at Scripps, Bishop has identified and characterized a new family of enzymes and investigated the pathways of mis-activated amino acids. In addition, he has done extensive research with t-RNA syntheses.
His work has led to the publication of several research papers.
Bishop received his B.A. in chemistry and biochemistry from UCSD in 1993 and earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from Princeton in 2000.
Bishop has received several honors for his expertise in the field of chemistry. In 1996, the Department of Chemistry at Princeton awarded him the Miles Pickering Teaching Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Instruction and also named him the Hugh Scott Thomas Fellow.
The College also made an offer for the position of assistant professor of biology and expects to hear from the candidate this week. The departents of economics, fine arts, French, geology, history, music and psychology are still in the process of hiring new professors.