Rowen Chang obtained his MS from National Taiwan University and PhD from Australian National University at Canberra. He completed postdoctoral training from 1978 to 1980 at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, Germany, and the Mayo Clinic. In 1981 he joined Ciba-Geigy in Basel, Switzerland, as head of the protein chemistry lab. In 1998 he joined the Institute of Molecular Medicine, University of Texas at Houston, as Professor and Director of the Center for Protein Chemistry.

Dr. Chang’s research interest focuses on the development of methodology for structural and functional analysis of proteins. His effort has led to several notable contributions in the field of protein chemistry, including the development the Dabsyl chloride method for high sensitivity amino acid analysis, the development of the DABITC method for micro-sequencing of proteins, the first proposal of the unique tadpole-like structure of hirudin (a thrombin inhibitor), which has led to the design and commercialization of a new class of synthetic anticoagulant, named Hirulog, by various pharmaceutical companies, and the development the disulfide scrambling technique for production of non-native protein X-isomers, which are useful compounds for therapeutic antibody and vaccine development. X-isomers of alpha-synuclein are currently under development for active immunotherapy of Parkinson’s disease.