KINGSTON, R.I. — March 16, 2018 — A Stanford University professor who researches what he calls “biomolecular motors” will be this year’s University of Rhode Island Cruickshank lecturer.

Steven M. Block, the S.W. Ascherman Professor of Sciences at Stanford, will speak Tuesday, March 27, at 5 p.m. in the Beaupre Center for Chemical and Forensic Sciences, 95 Upper College Road. The free talk is titled “Using Tractor Beams to Study the Molecules of Life.” A reception will be held at 4:30 in the Beaupre Center Lobby.

Block is best known as a founder of the field  of “single molecule biophysics.” He operates the Block lab at Stanford, which examines the nanoscience of life. His lab’s website says nature’s “nanoscale machines, which include proteins and nucleic acids, are complex macromolecules that are exquisitely designed (evolutionarily adapted) to carry out a multitude of sophisticated functions.”

Block holds degrees from Oxford University and Caltech, and he served as a faculty member at the Rowland Institute, Harvard University and Princeton University, prior to joining Stanford in 1999. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts & Sciences.

The Alexander M. Cruickshank Endowed Lectureship was established in 1999. The subject of the lecture rotates among chemistry, physics and biology. It is named for Alexander M. Cruickshank, who served on the URI chemistry faculty for 30 years and was subsequently the director of the Gordon Research Conferences until his retirement in 1993. The lecture series is sponsored by the URI Department of Physics, the Gordon Research Center and URI’s College of Arts and Sciences.