BACKGROUND Professor Sigman has a had an interest in both science and teaching since grade school where he was inspired by his sixth grade teacher, Mr. Young, and his obvious devotion to and enjoyment of teaching. Since then Jeff has built upon his scientific education and used that background to teach at the college level. He obtained his undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Saint Louis University and his PhD in bioinorganic chemistry from the University of Illinois in Urbana under the guidance of Professor Yi Lu.

Jeff began his formal teaching career as a Dreyfus Postdoctoral Teaching/Research Fellow at Wellesley College with Professor Adele Wolfson. At Wellesley he taught several introductory chemistry lectures and labs as well as biochemistry and special topics course on bioinorganic chemistry. Jeff also worked with several undergraduates in Professor Wolfson's lab on projects delving into the structure/function relationship of a metallopeptidase called Thimet Oligopeptidase. This has led to several publications and a successful collaboration on further projects involving TOP at Jeff's current position in the chemistry department at Saint Mary's College of California.

At Saint Mary's Jeff continues to research how certain parts of the TOP structure govern the enzymes ability recognize a specifically cleave many structurally unrelated yet physiologically relevant peptides. He has also taught several chemistry courses including General Chemistry (Chem10), a chemistry course for Nursing students (Chem02), inorganic chemistry (Chem130), and Special Topics course (Chem110) in which part of the focus was on the structural basis for protein misfolding in amyloid-based diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. Jeff is also involved in the development of a Biochemistry major at Saint Mary's College. Look for news on the new major in the very near future.