The Krieger School welcomed two new Bloomberg Distinguished Professors (BDPs) in spring 2025. BDPs are an interdisciplinary cohort of scholars working to address major world problems and teach the next generation.
Yuan He, Biophysics and Biology
Yuan He, an expert in structural biology who explores how flaws in the transcription and DNA repair pathways contribute to cancer predisposition and accelerated aging, holds appointments in the Departments of Biophysics and Biology as Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Structural Biophysics and Chromatin Biology.
He aims to understand how cells read and repair their genomes. His research encompasses two primary areas: transcription, in which genetic information is copied from DNA into messenger RNA; and DNA repair, particularly how cells detect and fix DNA lesions. DNA repair is crucial for the body to maintain regular cell function and to preserve the integrity of the genome, preventing mutations that can lead to diseases such as cancer.
“DNA strands break more often than you’d think,” he says. “Every cell in the body experiences multiple double-strand breaks a day. Sometimes this happens as part of a regular, programmed process, and sometimes DNA is damaged by external factors, such as UV light. I want to understand how these breaks are recognized and repaired, and why deficiencies in these repair pathways can lead to cancer or accelerated aging.”
David DeMille, Physics and Astronomy
David DeMille, a pioneering physicist who has developed techniques to search for evidence of new particles and forces that could explain some of the universe’s most enduring mysteries, is Bloomberg Distinguished Professor of Atomic/Molecular Physics and Precision Measurement with appointments in the Department of Physics and Astronomy and Hopkins’ Applied Physics Laboratory.
A world-leading atomic, molecular, and optical (AMO) physicist, DeMille is known for his groundbreaking work in the field of experimental physics. He has developed novel methods of precision measurement to probe for the existence of new particles and forces that exist outside the standard model of particle physics, the theoretical framework that explains the most basic known building blocks of the universe and the forces that govern it.
“We know that there are particles and forces that exist outside of this framework from observations made in cosmology,” DeMille says. “The most famous example of this is dark matter, which holds galaxies together more strongly than we can explain based on the physical matter that we see in the galaxies. However, none of the particles or forces in the standard model of particle physics have the properties that would explain this.”
