Philip A. Rea

Philip A. Rea is a British biochemist, science writer and educator, who is currently Professor of Biology and Rebecka and Arie Belldegrun Distinguished Director of the Vagelos Program in Life Sciences & Management at the University of Pennsylvania. His major contributions as a biochemist have been in the areas of membrane transport and xenobiotic detoxification, and as a science writer and educator in understanding the intersection between the life sciences and their implementation. In 2005, he and Mark V. Pauly founded the Roy and Diana Vagelos Program in Life Sciences & Management between the School of Arts and Sciences and Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, which he continues to co-direct in his capacity as Belldegrun Distinguished Director. Rea's work on serendipity in science has been featured in The Wall Street Journal. Additionally, he has served as a subject matter expert for 'The Scientist. Education Rea was educated in the comprehensive school system at Gartree High School, and Beachamp Upper School, Oadby, Leicester, before receiving his BSc in Biological Sciences with First Class Honors from the University of Sussex in 1978, and his DPhil in Plant Biochemistry from the Department of Plant Sciences and Magdalen College, University of Oxford in 1982. After his doctorate, he served as an MRC Research Fellow at the John Radcliffe Hospital, University of Oxford from 1982 to 1984 before joining the Department of Biology at McGill University in 1984 as a Merit Research Associate. From 1985 to 1987, he was an AFRC Research Fellow in the Department of Biology at the University of York, UK. Immediately before his appointment by the University of Pennsylvania in 1990, he was a Group Leader in the Department of Biochemistry, Rothamsted Research (formerly Institute of Arable Crops Research), UK. Research Rea is known for his work on vacuolar proton (H+) pumps, ATP-binding cassette (ABC) transporters, and the enzyme phytochelatin (PC) synthase. His early work on plant vacuolar H+-pumping ATPases resulted in the first definitive determination of the subunit composition of one of these enzymes and contributed to the concept of a new category of ATPases, so-called 'V-type ATPases' (Manolson et al 1985).