Professor William Hancock

Will Hancock is a Professor of Biomedical Engineering and Chemistry at Pennsylvania State University, and who will be spending his Fall 2026 sabbatical at the MRC Laboratory of Molecule Biology (LMB). He studies the molecular motors that transport cargo like vesicles, organelles and chromosomes throughout cells, as well as the microtubule tracks that they move along. This transport is important in neurons and in dividing cells, and his work links to both neurodegenerative disease and to developing approaches for targeting fast-dividing cancer cells. Hancock’s perspective on biology is to consider cells as collections of molecular machines that orchestrate their activities to carry out crucial cellular functions. This perspective leads to an interdisciplinary approach that integrates biophysics, cell biology, computational modeling, microscopy, and materials science. He also works on understanding cellulase enzymes that break down cellulose and a newly discovered class of enzymes called PETases that degrade plastic and have the potential to address both plastics pollution and the buildup of micro- and nanoplastics in our bodies.

Hancock is passionate about graduate training, and he runs an NIH-funded training grant at Penn State titled Molecular Machines Mechanism and Structure. This sabbatical will be an opportunity to share notes and best practices with international colleagues. He is an enthusiast of the enneagram, a personal growth tool that describes nine personality types and provides paths for better self-awareness and for improving interpersonal relationships, and his long-term goal is to use the enneagram to improve graduate mentorship and mentor-mentee relationships, a critical need in academic science and engineering. He is married and has two children in their 20s, and in his spare time he likes to play guitar and golf.