Chad Petit, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics, is a junior faculty winner of the Dean's Excellence Award in Service.
Petit received his bachelors of science degrees in Biochemistry, Microbiology, and Chemistry from Louisiana State University in 2001 and his Ph.D. from Louisiana State University in 2005. His graduate work focused on understanding how viral proteins communicate across cellular membranes and how this communication affects viral propagation. Petit's postdoctoral work was performed at the University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill where he sought to use NMR to understand the role of dynamics in protein function. In 2012, he joined the faculty at UAB in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics. The focus of Petit's lab is using structural and biophysical techniques to understand the mechanisms that underlie influenza virulence. He currently serves as the co-director of the Biochemistry, Structural, and Stem Cell Biology Graduate Training Theme and is chair of the Faculty Committee on Student Mental Health.