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Thomas Cleveland (Fed)
Physicist
Staff Bio
Thomas received his Ph.D. in 2014 from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Program in Molecular Biophysics, in the laboratory of Prof. Daniel Leahy. During his Ph.D., he performed structural and biochemical studies on extracellular components of the Hedgehog signaling pathway, as well as biochemical studies of the EGFR/HER/ErbB family of receptors. He then joined the NIST Center for Neutron Research as a National Research Council (NRC) postdoctoral fellow in 2014, where he worked under Paul Butler and Susan Krueger. In his postdoctoral work, he used Small-Angle X-ray and Neutron Scattering (SAXS/SANS) to study the process of membrane protein incorporation and crystallization from the lipidic cubic phase (LCP). In addition, Thomas performed scattering studies on nanolipoprotein particles (NLPs), also known as “Nanodiscs,” assembled using a novel cell-free expression method. Modeling of the scattering data demonstrated that NLPs assembled in this way were structurally equivalent to traditionally-assembled NLPs.
In 2018, Thomas joined the NIST Biomolecular Structure and Function Group as a staff physicist, with a joint appointment at the Institute of Bioscience and Biotechnology Research (IBBR). IBBR is a joint research institute composed of groups from NIST, the University of Maryland College Park (UMD), and the University of Maryland Baltimore (UMB). His current research involves developing methods for the joint application of scattering and cryogenic electron microscopy (CryoEM) to heterogeneous systems, where traditional single-particle CryoEM by particle averaging is inapplicable. These include systems with conformational heterogeneity (e.g., flexible proteins such as antibodies) or compositional heterogeneity (such as protein/membrane/surfactant assemblies that may include a distribution of stoichiometries). Specific systems include advanced vaccine and gene therapy formulations, e.g. LNPs and viral vectors, as well as biotherapeutics such as monoclonal antibodies. He also currently serves as co-manager of the NIST/IBBR CryoEM facility.