Kathleen Shive Matthews

Kathleen Matthews is Stewart Memorial Professor of Biochemistry & Cell Biology and Dean of the Wiess School of Natural Sciences at Rice University. She is a member of the Executive Committee of the inter-institutional Keck Center for Computational Biology and Chair of the Oversight Committee of the Gulf Coast Consortia.

Professor Matthews was born in Austin, Texas in 1945. She received her B.S. degree in Chemistry at the University of Texas, Austin in 1966 and her Ph.D. in Biochemistry at the University of California, Berkeley in 1970. After postdoctoral study at Stanford University, she joined the newly formed Department of Biochemistry at Rice in 1972. By 1987, she had been named Chair of her department, and in 1998 became Dean of the Weiss School. She has been awarded the George R. Brown Award for Superior Teaching on three occasions, as well as the Nicolas Salgo Distinguished Teacher Award. She has also served as a member for various sections, committees, and panels of the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Science Foundation, among others. For her distinguished career and service record, in 2002 she was named YWCA Outstanding Woman of Achievement in Medicine, Science, and Technology. She is active in multiple professional organizations, has served in a variety of editorial roles, and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Her research focuses on structure/function relationships in genetic regulatory proteins. Genetic regulation is an essential function in all organisms and provides the ability to respond to signals that reflect environmental conditions, determine developmental processes, and communicate conditions within an organism. Her laboratory utilizes a broad range of experimental methods to explore the molecular and energetic basis of DNA recognition, assembly, allostery, and conformation within these proteins.