Suzana K. Straus is a Canadian chemist who is a professor at the University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on host defense peptides (HDPs), as well as protein-protein and protein-ligand interactions.
Early life and education Straus is from Montreal. She graduated from McGill University with honours in 1993. She completed her doctoral research at ETH Zurich, where she developed new techniques to improve the resolution of solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance experiments. Her doctoral research was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC).
Research and career Straus moved to the United States, where she was awarded an NSERC fellowship to join the University of Pennsylvania as a postdoctoral scholar. She was awarded a Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship in 2000 and moved to the University of Oxford where she worked on structural studies of membrane proteins. In particular, she worked on solid-state magic-angle nuclear magnetic resonance techniques.
In 2002, Straus moved to Vancouver, where she was made a professor of chemistry at the University of British Columbia. Her research considers the identification of proteins in their native environments. She combines several spectroscopic and structural probes, including NMR, circular dichroism and differential scanning calorimetry. Her experimental research is used to determine structure-property relationships in biomolecules. She has studied the proteins associated with human herpesvirus 6 and human betaherpesvirus 7, and the interactions of these proteins with other binding partners. Straus has simultaneously looked to establish structure-function relationships in HDPs, as well as ways to deliver them.
Selected publications
Personal life Straus has two children. She has campaigned for the government to improve the provision of French speaking education for Canadian children. She served as President of the Federation of Francophone Parents of British Columbia and is active in the community.
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