Alexander S. Holehouse, PhD
DEPARTMENT OF BIOCHEMISTRY AND MOLECULAR BIOPHYSICS
Assistant Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics
2024 Dean’s Impact Award Recipient
Alexander S. Holehouse, PhD, sees that his role as a mentor is to empower and support trainees to succeed via whatever metric of success they wish to define. This involves direct one-on-one support in the context of scientific and professional development. Consequently, his students have done exceptionally well, receiving a slew of highly prestigious extramural fellowships (e.g., NCI F99/K00, NSF Graduate Research Fellowship). Holehouse’s trainees consistently generate exceptional scientific output and are recognized for their success with local and national awards at an impressive rate. He has engaged with the broader departmental and graduate-level communities with great enthusiasm. In 2022, with department support, he founded and organized a summer undergraduate program for trainees from backgrounds with limited access to scientific research. Now in its third year, this program has been a great success. He was also a founder and now mentor in the Mentorship to Enhance Diversity in Academia (MEDA) program, and shared professional advice with many trainees over the years. Beyond WashU Medicine, he has also made significant contributions to promoting junior trainees by co-founding the IDPSeminars, an online webinar series surrounding his area of research, which has become a centralized virtual community for scientists from around the world working on disordered proteins. In recognition of his mentorship and departmental efforts, he was awarded the Jayma Mikes Departmental Service Award in 2023.