Jonathan Dinman to Direct the Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research
Jonathan Dinman, a professor in the Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP), has been named director of the Institute for Bioscience and Biotechnology Research (IBBR), effective November 1, 2024. Located in the heart of Maryland’s biotechnology corridor in Montgomery County, IBBR is a research partnership between UMCP; the University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB); and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).
“Jon was a strong leader as department chair, and he will bring those skills and a culture of collaboration to IBBR,” said Amitabh Varshney, dean of UMCP’s College of Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences. “Jon always supports faculty members in their efforts to pursue research at the highest level, and he will ensure IBBR is providing top-notch training to students and postdocs.”
IBBR’s 36 fellows and numerous postdoctoral researchers and graduate students use advanced analytical and structural biology instrumentation and computation to accelerate the discovery, development and manufacturing of therapeutics and vaccines. With annual sponsored research funding exceeding $10 million and support from the University of Maryland Strategic Partnership: MPowering the State, IBBR researchers form partnerships with biopharmaceutical companies and federal agencies to develop biomedical and health care solutions and expedite their commercialization.
“I’m a scientist, and to me, the IBBR is a bioscientist's playground,” Dinman said. “Labs filled with state-of-the-art biophysical equipment and cutting-edge information technologies give us capabilities from first discovery to the marketplace. Plus, our partnership with NIST gives us first access to the newest measurement technologies, giving us a unique competitive edge.”
Dinman, who served as co-associate director of IBBR this year, joined UMCP in 2002 as an associate professor and was promoted to professor in 2008. He served as chair of the Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics from 2014 to 2021 and then spent a year in the private sector in 2021 developing a screening program to identify novel antiviral drugs.
Dinman’s interests focus on virology, ribosome structure/function relationships and regulation of gene expression. Much of his research centers on a clever mechanism called programmed ribosomal frameshifting (PRF), which allows RNA to pack more information into a single small molecule. By prompting the cell to read the RNA molecule two different ways, one RNA molecule carries the code for two proteins. In effect, it is much like the data compression algorithms that computers use to package large files.
Many viruses that cause human disease—including HIV, Zika and chikungunya—use RNA as their genetic material instead of DNA. These viruses also use PRF to carry more information. Dinman studies how PRF works in RNA viruses and whether PRF can be exploited to defeat certain diseases. His research has shown that PRF might be a therapeutic target for several viruses, thus opening the door to potential vaccines.
Dinman has been awarded 14 patents and authored over 100 articles and book chapters. He serves on the editorial board of the journals Nucleic Acids Research, Journal of Biological Chemistry, and Infection and Drug Resistance and as a grant reviewer for the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.
Dinman earned his bachelor’s degree in philosophy from Oberlin College in 1980 and his Ph.D. in immunology and infectious diseases from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health in 1988. Prior to joining UMCP, he was a faculty member in the Department of Molecular Genetics & Microbiology at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School.