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Nancy Forde

Dr. Nancy Forde is an American biophysicist and Professor in the Department of Physics at Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, British Columbia. She is the Principal Investigator for the Forde Lab at Simon Fraser University.

Education

Nancy Forde obtained a Bachelor’s degree in Chemical Physics from the University of Toronto in 1994. She then went on to get a Master’s and Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Chicago. From 1999 to 2004, Forde completed her postdoc from the University of California, Berkeley.

Honors

Nancy has been awarded the Cottrell Scholar, the Michael Smith Foundation for the Health Research (MSFHR) Scholar, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Science and Engineering Scholarship. She has also been rewarded with the Harper Dissertation Fellowship from the University of Chicago and the NSERC Post-Doctoral Fellowship.

Research

Her current research is focused on the molecular, fibrillar, and self-assembly mechanisms and properties of the extracellular matrix protein collagen. She is interested in the mechanisms of novel molecular motors as well as the development of centrifuge force microscopy and optical trapping strategies to manipulate and distinguish proteins and other biomaterials. Dr. Forde’s research studies the molecular level of collagen’s triple helix structure.

The Forde Lab

The Forde lab is a biophysics research group that is affiliated with the departments of Physics, Chemistry, and Molecular Biology and Biochemistry at Simon Fraser University. The lab is specifically focused on the molecular level of collagen and the stability and mechanical properties of each individual molecule. They have been developing characterization techniques using atomic force microscopy (AFM) to identify the shapes and sizes of collagen.