Nathan Belliveau

Nathan Belliveau is an Assistant Professor of Biochemistry in the BioFrontiers Institute, where he also holds a Marvin H. Caruthers Endowed Chair for Early-Career Faculty. He directs a research program combining bioengineering, biophysics, cell biology, and genomics to uncover mechanisms of electric field-directed cell migration. During his postdoctoral training he discovered the first protein receptor ever shown to sense electric fields, which he named “Galvanin”. Such a biosensor had been theorized for decades based on known cellular responses to electric fields, but its identity eluded detection until Nathan’s development of new functional genomic tools that enabled its identification in human immune cells. His group will develop new mechanistic insights into electrotaxis to answer biological questions relevant to cell motility and immune system function and to develop biomedical tools for regenerative medicine, immunoengineering, and cellular guidance.

Dr. Belliveau has extensive training in bioengineering, biophysics, and cell physiology. He earned a B.ASc. in Nanotechnology Engineering from the University of Waterloo. He followed this with a PhD in Bioengineering at Caltech with Rob Phillips, where he was supported by a HHMI International Student Award and awards from the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. He deepened his biological expertise through postdoctoral training with Julie Theriot at the University of Washington and HHMI. Here his work was supported by a HHMI Jane Coffin Childs Fellowship and a NIH K99/R00 Pathway to Independence Award. He also has experience co-founding a company and is an inventor on 5 patents.

Dr. Belliveau developed and taught a course on modern healthcare tools and the ethics of their use at the University of Washington. He has also served as a faculty member of the Woods Hole “Physical Biology of the Cell” and “Physiology” courses at the Marine Biological Laboratory where he taught an intensive hands-on microscope building module.