IMAGE: Penn State Booker has chaired the ASBMB Minority Affairs Committee and was one of the founding principal investigators on the ASBMB Interactive Mentoring Activities for Grantsmanship Enhancement grant writing workshop. He also co-organized the 2016 ASBMB annual meeting. He now serves on the finance and nominating committees. "Squire's work is characterized by its elegance and rigor,” said a nominator. “His research productivity is all the more impressive given his heavy teaching load and service commitments both at Penn State and nationally." Booker’s main research interests include deciphering the molecular details by which enzymes — a special class of proteins — catalyze reactions in the cell. He then uses the insight gained to manipulate these reactions for various objectives, ranging from the production of biofuels to the development of antibacterial agents. His laboratory garnered international attention for elucidating a pathway by which disease-causing bacteria such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus evade entire classes of commonly used antibiotics. These results were published in three papers in the journal Science, a paper in Nature Chemical Biology, and two papers in the Journal of the American Chemical Society. He is particularly well known for his research on enzymes employing extremely reactive molecules, known as free radicals, to catalyze their reactions.