Princeton University

Graduate Student, Chemical and Biological Engineering

National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow

School of Engineering and Applied Science

Thesis Title: Protein Structure Prediction and Design with Post-Translational Modifications and Unnatural Amino Acids

About

George attended Louis E. Dieruff High School where he graduated with Highest Honors and Perfect Attendance from the National Academy Foundation Academy of Information Technology.  He graduated from The Pennsylvania State University Schreyer Honors College as Class Marshal (Rank 1/100+) with a Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering with High Distinction and continued in the Integrated Undergraduate/Graduate Program for his Master of Science in 2010 under the excellent advisement of Professors Costas Maranas, Michael Janik, and Patrick Cirino.

At Penn State, Mr. Khoury was elected and re-elected Vice President of the Council of Commonwealth Student Governments (CCSG) in 2006 and 2007. In this role he served on the Administrative Council on Undergraduate Education, the University Faculty Senate, the University Advising Council and several other academic administrative bodies.  He was featured as Our Image in the American Chemical Society Annual Report in 2006.

In 2008 he was elected President of CCSG. In this role he served on the Penn State Board of Trustees as a student representative, as well as a member of the Penn State Alumni Association Executive Board. In 2008, he was awarded with a Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship as one of 20 Chemical Engineers in the USA. Perhaps his most dear initiative as CCSG President, George worked with the Office of the University Registrar and contributed to getting the web schedule of courses to update in real-time at every campus by introducing the refresh button, which previously was updated only once daily at 7:30 AM.

George published a paper featured on the cover of Protein Science where he developed a computational method to redesign Candida boidinii xylose reductase to switch its cofactor specificity (NADPH→NADH). The designs were experimentally tested to find novel activity for the alternative cofactor, and even dual cofactor specificity in several designs. George’s research has been presented in over 20 technical presentations and he shared a gold medal with the Penn State team at the international genetically engineered machines competition hosted at MIT.

George recently was selected for a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. He is pursuing his studies at Princeton University towards a PhD in Chemical and Biological Engineering. He is conducting his thesis research under the advisement of Professor Christodoulos A. Floudas, a world-renown authority on the optimization of complex systems ( http://titan.princeton.edu ). His thesis involves protein structure prediction and de novo protein design in the presence of post-translational modifications.

George served as an Assistant in Instruction for the senior-level course CBE 442: Design, Synthesis and Optimization of Chemical Processes in Fall 2011, for which he was awarded a Princeton Engineering Council Excellence in Teaching Award. The course and the daily interactions with the students were very enriching experiences and he is thankful of his students for their persistence and their hard work.

Please feel free to contact him at gkhoury@princeton.edu.

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