ROCKVILLE, MD – The Biophysical Society is pleased to announce that Bridget Carragher, PhD, of the New York Structural Biology Center, has been named the recipient of the 2022 Innovation Award. Carragher will be honored at the Society’s 66th Annual Meeting, being held in San Francisco, California from February 19-23, 2022.

Carragher is being recognized for her for the development of inkjet deposition and vitrification technology for cryo-EM. She first developed a prototype robotic tool, called Spotiton, which integrates piezo-electric inkjet dispensers with optical cameras for depositing picoliter amounts of sample onto grids. This was a completely novel method for TEM specimen preparation that provided a proof-of-concept that small volume dispensing is feasible and opened the door for similar technologies. Spotiton has enabled solving many structures that were intractable by other means.

“Bridget Carragher is an innovative scientist, who has advanced important new ideas and methods in the field of biophysics,” said BPS President Frances Separovic, University of Melbourne, Australia. “Exciting technology promises to revolutionize and automate the last major hurdle in cryo-EM. These tools provide fundamentally novel opportunities to study dynamic macromolecules in action. Bridget is at the forefront of all these pioneering efforts. We are proud to recognize her achievement and are eager to see the future innovations she achieves throughout her career.”

About the Award - The BPS Innovation Award recognizes a BPS member who advances our fundamental understanding of biological systems through the development of novel theory, models, concepts, techniques, or applications.