Dr. Ash Tripathy will step down as Core Director from the Macromolecular Interactions Facility (Mac-In-Fac) on July 1, 2025, as he will be retiring from the university.
Since taking over directorship in 2000, he has made it a state-of-the-art facility for macromolecular interactions and their characterization with his many extramural grants, and generous support from the Core Facility Advocacy Committee and Lineberger Comprehensive Cancer Center. Very few facilities in the country can rival the Mac-In-Fac in terms of instrumentation and resources it offers. Dr. Tripathy received an instrument grant from the National Institutes of Health in 2003 and his first North Carolina Biotechnology Center grant in 2000 which allowed UNC to be the first university in the world to acquire a fully automated isothermal titration calorimeter. This put the facility on the map and users flocked to the facility to use this instrument to explore binding interactions. Subsequently, Ash received three more instrument grants from the North Carolina Biotechnology Center that allowed him to buy the latest model SPR biosensor, Biacore 8K, an Octet BLI, and other instruments.
Dr. Tripathy has helped countless users from 15 departments at UNC, users from Duke and NC State universities, and many biotech companies in their research efforts. More than 600 peer-reviewed papers have been published containing data obtained at the Mac-In-Fac. Ash loves teaching, be it one-on-one in the facility or in the classroom. He has been teaching the BIOC 662 course, a critical component of the Biophysics Training Program at UNC and one of the most popular courses offered by our department. So far, about 350 students have taken his class. He loved being a part of our exciting and vibrant department. Thus, Ash has truly contributed to the teaching and research missions of our department and the university and has made a huge difference in the research and teaching landscapes at UNC, and will be missed, especially by the users of the Mac-In-Fac.
In the first search committee meeting to hire a new Director for the Mac-In-Fac, Jean Cook, chair of the dept remarked “We can’t replace Ash. What we are trying to do is to find his successor”.
We are enormously grateful for everything Ash Tripathy has done for UNC research and the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics over the last 25+ years, and we wish him a relaxing and well-deserved retirement.