ROCKVILLE, MD – The Biophysical Society is pleased to announce the recipients of its 2023 Society Awards. These awards are very competitive in nature and are intended to recognize Society members for excellence in biophysics. The winners will be honored at the Society’s 67th Annual Meeting, being held in San Diego, California from February 18-22, 2023.
The 2023 Anatrace Membrane Protein Award is given to Krzysztof (Kris) Palczewski of the University of California, Irvine - Center for Translational Vision Research, for his foundational work on the G protein-coupled receptor (GPCR) rhodopsin and disease mechanisms and treatments; and his impact on structural biology, notably lipid interactions and conformational changes exhibited on ligand binding and isomerization. Read the full release here.
The 2023 Avanti Award in Lipids is given to Karen G. Fleming of Johns Hopkins University, for her groundbreaking contributions to our fundamental understanding of membrane protein stability, folding, biogenesis and insertion through development and application of novel experimental tools that quantify membrane protein folding kinetics and thermodynamics. Read the full release here.
The 2023 Michael and Kate Bárány Award for Young Investigators is given to Jeanne C. Stachowiak of the University of Texas at Austin for her paradigm shifting discovery in the field of membrane biophysics, demonstrating that proteins can induce membrane curvature solely through a surface crowding mechanism. Read the full release here.
The 2023 Carolyn Cohen Innovation Award is given to Jin Zhang of the University of California, San Diego, for her pioneering work in elucidating spatiotemporal regulation of signaling molecules in their native biological context, the living cell. Read the full release here.
The 2023 Margaret Oakley Dayhoff Award is given to Elizabeth H. Kellogg of Cornell University MGB, for her important contributions to the mechanistic understanding of challenging and complex biological systems, including the neuronal microtubule interactor tau and a variety of DNA transposition systems. Read the full release here.
The 2023 Founders Award is given to José Nelson Onuchic of Rice University’s Center for Theoretical and Biological Physics, for his wide-ranging impactful contributions to theoretical and computational biophysics across the scale of molecular-level interactions to that of cellular systems encompassing electron transfer, protein folding, genetic networks and genome architecture. Read the full release here.
The 2023 Emily M. Gray Award is given to Jonathan King, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for his distinguished record of excellence in classroom teaching, research mentoring, and education of the public on science and policy. Read the full release here.
The 2023 BPS Award in the Biophysics of Health & Disease is given to Kevin H. Gardner of the Advanced Science Research Center, The Graduate Center, CUNY and City College of New York, for his development and application of magnetic resonance methodology to elucidate the regulation mechanism of molecular switches, leading to the development of PAS domain inhibitors for cancer therapies and the exceptional translation of this understanding to the development of an effective cancer drug. Read the full release here.
The 2023 Kazuhiko Kinosita Award in Single-Molecule Biophysics is given to Ben Schuler, of the University Zurich, for his development and application of single-molecule fluorescence methodology and the fundamental contributions to understanding protein folding and intrinsically disordered proteins. Read the full release here.
The 2023 Ignacio Tinoco Award is given to Sarah A. Woodson of Johns Hopkins University, for her inspiring work on RNA folding and the assembly of RNA-protein complexes using frontier biophysical methods which established currently accepted models for how RNA complexes assemble and function. Read the full release here.