Clarkson University President Tony Collins has announced that Costel Darie has been promoted from associate professor to professor of Chemistry & Biomolecular Science in the School of Arts & Sciences. Promotion to professor is considered to be virtually the highest honor that a university can bestow upon its faculty.
Darie has been a faculty member at Clarkson University since 2009. He received his BS and MS in biochemistry from Alexandru Ioan Cuza University, Iasi, Romania, and his Ph.D. in biochemistry from Albert-LudwigsUniversitaet Freiburg, Germany in 2002. Following graduation, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Mount Sinai School of Medicine and New York University School of Medicine.
His research interests are in the area of protein identification, quantitation and characterization, with a specific focus on breast cancer research using quantitative proteomics. His work is interdisciplinary and he collaborated with faculty from various departments from Clarkson, including late Artem Melman (Chemistry & Biomolecular Science), Kenneth Wallace and Thomas Lufkin (Biology), Sumona Mondal (Mathematics), Ali Boolani (PT) and most important, Thomas Holsen and Bernard Crimmins (Chemical & Environmental Engineering).
Darie includes undergraduates in his research activities and has supervised independent research projects for 68 undergraduate students, 4 MS (all visitors), 9 PhD students, 5 PhDs and 1 HS student. He also hosted two Fulbright Fellows. Darie has published over 125 papers, book chapters and commentaries, in which he included an extensive number of undergraduate students. He also co-edited with Alisa Woods a book entitled Advancements of Mass Spectrometry in Biomedical Research the first edition was published in 2015 and the second edition in 2019.
Darie and his students have presented their work at professional conferences in the US, Canada, and Europe, including the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, the Protein Society, and Eastern Analytical Symposium. So far, his lab members delivered over 130 oral presentations and over 200 poster presentations.
Darie’s research funding, totaling ~$1,700,000 in external dollars, includes grants from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health, Environmental Protection Agency, Keep a Breast Foundation, Kendrick Labs, US Army Research Office, or The Scientist. The National Cancer Institute grant was just recently awarded to identify protein biomarkers responsible for the onset of breast cancer.
Costel loves to travel and see new places, in particular, Vecchia Europa by car and the New World by RV/motorhome. Great points of interest for his travel include exploring national parks and caves, and old cities, fortresses and ruins. Next goals are to explore the rest of the world. Costel and his wife Alisa have two children, Constantine and Celeste, and a dog, Jesse.
