麻豆传媒色情片

Award

Honig honored for his contributions through computational methods

Winner of the 2012 DeLano Award for Computational Biosciences
Geoff Hunt
Feb. 23, 2012

The 麻豆传媒色情片 and 麻豆传媒色情片 Biology has named , professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator, the winner of the society’s 2012 .

awards_delano_honig

Barry Honig

About the award

The DeLano Award for Computational Biosciences was established by family, friends and colleagues to honor the legacy of Warren L. DeLano. The award is given to a scientist for the most accessible and innovative development or application of computer technology to enhance research in the life sciences at the molecular level. The contribution should include two key elements – more productive use of computers to accelerate and facilitate research and ready access of these programs for the scientific community.

The 2011 DeLano Award recipient, Axel Brunger of Stanford University, stated his case in nominating Honig for the award succinctly: “Few computational scientists had as much of an impact as Dr. Honig on the understanding of macromolecular interactions in biology.”

Honig said he was delighted that the society “has chosen to recognize, with the Delano Prize, the increasingly important role of computational research in modern biosciences.” He continued, “I am honored to be a recipient of the award and am thankful to the community of people who were close to Warren DeLano for the vision and initiative that led to the establishment of the award.”

Honig’s work has focused on understanding how proteins take advantage of electrostatics, the positive and negative electric fields on their surface, to fold into three-dimensional structures and bind to other proteins or cell membranes. “Barry Honig has taught many of us, including myself,” said John Kuriyan from the University of California, Berkeley, “to appreciate the way in which the shapes of proteins influence the electric fields generated by the charges within them.”

Based on his studies of protein electrostatics, Honig and his colleagues developed software that has become a mainstay used to analyze protein structures. According to Andrew McCammon, a professor at the University of California, San Diego, “these methods have been used by many hundreds of research groups to assess numerous studies of the activities of biopolymers, resulting in the now-familiar red-to-blue surfaces of proteins and other molecules on the covers and in the pages of scientific magazines worldwide.”

During his education and training, Honig bounced back and forth between the United States and Israel. He did his undergraduate and master’s work in the U.S. before decamping for Israel to obtain his Ph.D. in chemical physics at the Weizmann Institute of Science. He carried out his research at Tel Aviv University. Again crossing the Atlantic, Honig did postdoctoral fellowships at Harvard University and Columbia University before returning to Israel in 1973 to accept a position at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. After six years, he returned to America, spending two years at the University of Illinois and then moving back in 1981 to Columbia, where he seems finally to have settled. In 2000, he was named a Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator.

Honig will receive his award during the Experimental Biology 2012 conference in San Diego, where he will deliver an award lecture. The presentation will take place at 8:30 a.m. April 24 in the San Diego Convention Center.

 

Enjoy reading ASBMB Today?

Become a member to receive the print edition monthly and the digital edition weekly.

Learn more
Geoff Hunt

Geoff Hunt is the ASBMB's former outreach manager. 

Get the latest from ASBMB Today

Enter your email address, and we鈥檒l send you a weekly email with recent articles, interviews and more.

Latest in People

People highlights or most popular articles

Honors for Bhatt, Lim and Nuñez
Member News

Honors for Bhatt, Lim and Nuñez

Sept. 16, 2024

Ami Bhatt receives the American Society of Hematology's William Dameshek Prize. The Pew Charitable Trusts selects Ci Ji Lim and James Nuñez as 2024 Pew scholars.

In memoriam: Robert Warren Newburgh
In Memoriam

In memoriam: Robert Warren Newburgh

Sept. 16, 2024

He was a distinguished developmental and cell biologist and a member of the ASBMB since 1957.

'Don鈥檛 be afraid to take a different path'
Profile

'Don鈥檛 be afraid to take a different path'

Sept. 11, 2024

In 2016, MOSAIC scholar Rebecca Ann Faulkner paused her career for four years to focus on her family, a decision she believes made her a more effective and empathetic scientist.

Honors for Baserga, Matunis and Tate
Member News

Honors for Baserga, Matunis and Tate

Sept. 9, 2024

Awards, promotions, milestones and more. Find out what's going on in the lives of ASBMB members.

In memoriam: William Catterall
In Memoriam

In memoriam: William Catterall

Sept. 9, 2024

Known as the 鈥渇ather of ion channels,鈥 he was a neuroscientist and pharmacologist at the University of Washington and an ASBMB member for more than 45 years.

Announcing the winners of the 麻豆传媒色情片 Motifs bioart competition
Contest

Announcing the winners of the 麻豆传媒色情片 Motifs bioart competition

Sept. 3, 2024

The 12 winning works of art to be featured in the 2025 ASBMB calendar were selected from 37 entries received from scientists in both academia and industry at all career stages with submissions coming from as far away as Pakistan and Brazil.