“A lucky break, an idea, a business - Applied BioPhysics”

On Monday October 4th, Schoharie resident Charles Keese will appear at the Schoharie Library. His talk will describe how he and Nobel Laureate Ivar Giaever first discovered an instrumental method to study both normal and cancer cells at General Electric’s Research and Development Center and their journey to commercialize the device.

Today, Applied BioPhysics, located in the Rensselaer Technology Park in East Greenbush, manufactures the ECIS (electric cell-substrate impedance sensing) system that finds use in many biomedical research laboratories throughout the world.

Charlie Keese graduated from Cobleskill High School in 1962 and received his BS degree in physics from SUNY Albany and his Ph.D. degree in biology from RPI. For several years he taught at SUNY Cobleskill and then joined GE R&D in 1984 as a research scientist and the Department of Biology at RPI in 1989 as a senior research scientist. In 1991, with Ivar Giaever, he co-founded Applied BioPhysics and now serves as the company president.

Charlie and his wife Kathy make their home on Stony Brook Road in Schoharie.