Memoir to Honor and Thank My PH.D. Advisor, Professor Miguel Llinas

I am writing a memoir to honor and thank my PH.D. advisor, Professor Miguel Llinas.

I first met Dr. Miguel Llinas in his famous, notoriously hard, quantum mechanics class when I, a foreign student from Korea, went to the Graduate school in Department of Chemistry, Carnegie Mellon University in fall, 1984. I felt very naïve and poorly prepared to start graduate school since at that time, I was newly married, had an infant and knew little English. Dr. Llinas, however, helped me to feel welcome and to adjust to life in the U.S. as a graduate student. When I joined his research group, he continued to be supportive in all my academic endeavors, counseled and offered advice when I asked for help even in non-academic matters.

He was an effective teacher and his quantum mechanics, signal processing and other physical chemistry classes were instrumental in helping me decide that biomolecular NMR/structure elucidation was the field where I wanted to make my contributions in research. I enjoyed all of his classes and learned important fundamentals of quantum physics, especially spin physics and Fourier transformations where I acquired my first interest in NMR.

Dr. Llinas was a dedicated mentor not only by supervising our research projects but also by spending his effort and time teaching us how to present our work effectively, in talks, written papers and posters especially focusing on making good figures.

He created a family like atmosphere in his research lab and fostered positive and cooperative relationships among his graduate students and postdocs. I felt fortunate that Miguel emphasized cooperation and collaboration among his group members rather than cut throat competition. I still remember with abundant gratitude the kindness of Dr. Llinas’ group members, especially Marichi Rejante, Andy Petros, Theresa Thewes and Liliana and Virgil Simplaceanu, unselfishly spending their valuable time teaching me NMR and/or other biochemical techniques, guiding me to do good, critical science and even correcting my English skills whenever I wrote manuscripts, research proposals and even curriculum vitae. I would not have become who and what I am now without their encouragement.

I have fond memories of congenial lunches with our research group where we talked about almost anything from foods (very ethnically diverse, from best Argentine cheese, American barbeques and hamburgers, Italian pasta, Indian curry, Chinese Peking duck, Filipino spring rolls and Korean kimchi), current world news to new scientific topics. Also, I remember happy group times every summer when Dr. Llinas invited us to his house, fed us with the best Argentine foods (Empanadas, paella and etc.) and entertained us with his family orchestra, Estela, Mrs. Llinas, playing the piano, his eldest son Manuel playing the violin and his third son joining with his funny hand/body gestures to go with the music.

Dr. Llinas encouraged his grad students to develop a broad base of skills by requiring that we all become experts in every aspect of our research. We, his graduate students, had to conduct all from protein purification to NMR assignments and structure determinations. In the mid-1980s, protein preparation from E. coli cloning was not mainstream yet, at least not in our lab and so we had to rely on purifying proteins (specifically kringle domains from plasminogen and urokinase) from natural sources like blood plasma and urine. We had to take turns making routine trips to the Pittsburgh Blood bank by bus to obtain expired blood plasma. The experience in purification from such natural materials was extremely helpful for my future research because I learned important techniques of protein purification. Sometime in 1987, Dr. Llinas set up a collaboration with a prominent molecular biologist, Dr. Robert Kelley from Genentech, who provided us with a recombinant kringle protein. That collaboration was a godsend since I was having a difficult time generating a pure kringle domain sample from urokinase using conventional purification techniques. Having a pure sample and getting our first high resolution 500 MHz Bruker NMR spectrometer coincidentally at the same time was instrumental for total NMR assignments and solution structure determination. Our work resulted in the first complete NMR assignment and protein solution structure determination ever to be produced in our lab and indeed, at CMU. Dr. Llinas and I had quite the learning curve as we explored the various methods for deriving solutions structures from molecular geometries and NOE distance constraints. We eventually used a simulated annealing protocol in XPLOR, which resulted in beautiful, precise families of structures.

Dr. Llinas was very understanding of constraints in our personal lives. I had been living alone in Pittsburgh with my very young son for several years because my husband had been transferred to another university. As I neared the completion of my PhD research, I felt it was time to reunite my family by joining my husband. At a time when working remotely was far from mainstream, Dr. Llinas understood my family needs and agreed to let me do it. He made it possible for me to finish my degree while working under unusual family and geographical constraints.

He stayed in touch with me and continued to mentor me even after I graduated and followed my professional progress. He always had faith in my abilities as a research scientist. He was very supportive of my decisions and enthusiastically recommended me whenever I applied for positions and grants. Whenever we met in conferences, he was always happy to see his lab people and tried to have a reunion dinner there. I miss him, Dr. Llinas my best mentor, who believed in me even at times when I found it hard to believe in myself. For this, I will always be grateful.

Dr. Llinas group gathering in the summer, 1985. Dr. Llinas is at the second right, the second row; Marichi at the far right, the first row; Liliana Simplaceanu, next to Dr. Llinas, Theresa at the far right, last row; Andy at the middle, last row; Dr. Vasudevan Ramesh at the second left, last row; me, far left, last row. The picture was taken by Manuel using the camera of Dr. Marichi Rejante, my best friend and our lab photographer at those times

Dr. Llinas lab’s conference/lunch room. The hand-drawn sequence alignment of the kringle domains that our lab had been working with can be seen on the bulletin board behind (from the left) Andy, Meifen, me and Ramesh. The picture was taken by Marichi