What’s been happening:

Dr. Klakamp received his B.A. degree in chemistry from Houghton College in 1985 and his Ph.D. in bioinorganic chemistry from The Pennsylvania State University in 1990. He was a postdoctoral fellow from 1990 - 1993 at the California Institute of Technology where he was awarded a National Research Service Award from the National Cancer Institute to fund his postdoctoral study. During his postdoctoral fellowship in 1991, Dr. Klakamp was also interviewed by NASA for selection as a mission specialist astronaut. From 1993-1994, Dr. Klakamp was a research associate at the Michigan Molecular Institute where he developed biomedical uses of Starburst Dendrimers. He served as a forensic scientist for the Pennsylvania State Police in Erie, PA in 1996 before joining GeneMedicine in The Woodlands, Texas in 1996 to perform non-viral gene therapy research. In 1999 he joined the vaccines division of Chiron Corporation in Emeryville, California. Dr. Klakamp joined Abgenix Inc. in 2001 in Fremont, CA as a senior scientist where he performed biophysical characterization of antigen/monoclonal antibody (mAb) interactions. He was with AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals/MedImmune from 2006 to 2008 as a Principal Scientist II performing biophysical characterization of antigen/mAb interactions; Most recently Dr. Klakamp joined Takeda Pharmaceuticals in South San Francisco in Sept. 2008 as a Research Fellow where he heads the Biophysical Chemistry and Research Informatics Groups; He has been married to Jennifer Zhai since 2005 and has one step son, Greg Chi, and lives in Fremont, CA.