Renowned Scientist and Nobel Prize Winner to Present Lecture
Alabama A&M to Host Nobel Laureate Dr. Joachim Frank in 24th Putcha Venkateswarlu Memorial Lecture
For more than two decades, Alabama A&M University’s Department of Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics has hosted Nobel Laureates in the Putcha Venkateswarlu Memorial Lecture Series – an event that has become a centerpiece of academic and scientific dialogue in the Huntsville-Madison region. This year, Nobel Laureate Dr. Joachim Frank - a pioneering researcher from Columbia University - will deliver the 24th lecture in the series Friday, October 18, 2024.
Frank, who was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry alongside Jacques Dubochet and Richard Henderson for their transformative work on cryo-electron microscopy, will present his Nobel Lecture titled “Single-Particle Reconstruction of Biological Molecules—Story in a Sample.” The event will take place at 3:00 p.m. in Dawson Auditorium, located in the Cooperative Extension Building, with a reception following at 5:00 p.m. in the Clyde Foster Multipurpose Room, College of Business & Public Affairs.
Frank, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics, and professor of biological sciences at Columbia University, received his Ph.D. in 1970 from the Technical University of Munich. In 1975, he joined the Wadsworth Center in Albany, New York as a senior research scientist. In 1985, Frank joined the biomedical sciences faculty in the newly founded School of Public Health of The State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany, now University of Albany, SUNY, before moving to New York to assume his current positions.
Frank’s research has revolutionized our understanding of biomolecular structures, unlocking new potential in pharmaceutical development and biomedical sciences. His lab at Columbia University has been at the forefront of developing advanced electron microscopy techniques and computational methods for analyzing marcromolecules.
He was honored for his contributions to the development of cryo-EM of biological molecules and the study of protein synthesis with the 2014 Franklin Medal for Life Science. In 2017, Frank shared the Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences with Richard Henderson and Marin van Heel. That same year, Frank was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry together with Henderson and Jacques Dubochet.
Frank is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Microbiology, fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
This event, free and open the public, is a rare opportunity to engage with one of the foremost scientists of our time and gain insights into the future of cryo-electron microscopy and its impact on biological research.
Sponsored by:
The U.S. Department of Energy, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems, SOL Engineering Services, LLC, American Chemical Society, BASF, the Alabama A&M Department of Physics, Chemistry, and Mathematics, and the College of Agricultural, Life and Natural Sciences.