Biography:

Nicholas V. Hud is professor of chemistry and biochemistry at Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his BS from Loyola Marymount University and his PhD from the University of California-Davis. The research in his laboratory is directed towards understanding the physical and chemical factors that control the structure, folding, and assembly of nucleic acids (i.e., DNA and RNA). In 2000 he proposed the "molecular midwife" hypothesis, which may explain the evolutionary origin of Watson-Crick base pairs in DNA and RNA. Hud currently serves as principal investigator of the National Science Foundations Chemical Bonding Center "Origins Project" and is a member of the Georgia Tech-Emory University Center for Fundamental and Applied Molecular Evolution.

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