Adam Stevens is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Cancer Biology at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. He received a B.A. in chemistry from Johns Hopkins University, where he conducted research under the supervision of Dr. Marc Greenberg. As an undergraduate, Adam studied the effects of DNA lesions formed through oxidative damage on the base excision repair (BER) enzyme DNA Polymerase λ (Pol λ). This work explored the biochemical mechanism of how cells reverse oxidative damage to maintain genomic integrity and how DNA damage mediated by anti-cancer agents translates into cell death.

Adam completed his Ph.D. in Chemical Biology at Princeton University in the lab of Dr. Tom Muir. Here, he applied a combination of protein biochemistry, biophysics, and engineering to characterize and design a class of fractured proteins called ultrafast naturally split inteins. Through this work, insights gained from studying the structural and biochemical basis of protein splicing were applied to design engineered split inteins with unprecedented robust activity. These enhanced split inteins have been applied as tools in protein semisynthesis, synthetic biology, and gene therapy.

Adam carried out a postdoctoral fellowship in the lab of Dr. Wendell Lim at the University of California San Francisco Cell Design Institute, where he engineered a toolkit of synthetic cellular adhesion molecules (synCAMs) that combine orthogonal extracellular interactions with signaling domains from CAMs to yield programmable cell-cell interactions with tunable interface morphology and adhesion strength. These synCAMs were applied to direct specific multicellular assembly and complex tissue interactions.

The Stevens Lab will begin operation in March 2025 at the Perelman School of Medicine.