Biology professor Ken Stedman is an educator, communicator, and co-founder of the Portland State University Center for Life in Extreme Environments. His current research focuses on viruses of extremophiles, unique chimeric virus genomes, and applications of extremophiles for vaccine stabilization. His research won the BioMed Central Research Award, was finalist for the Golden Mole Award for Accidental Brilliance (NPR), and was featured in the museum exhibit Nanoland. He was featured in This Week in Virology, a prime-time CBC documentary, and is working on a documentary film on viruses, “Edge of Life”. His research is funded by the NIH, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, NSF, NASA, and the American Heart Association. He has a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from Stanford University, a Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from U.C. Berkeley and was a postdoctoral fellow in Germany, the Netherlands, and Montana. He also recently founded a company, StoneStable, Inc.