Keith Moffat has been selected as the recipient of the 2011 Patterson Award from the American Crystallographic Association (ACA). Moffat is Principal Investigator for the BioCARS research facility at the U.S. Department of Energy Office of Science’s Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory. From 2002-2010 he was the Deputy Provost for Research at the University of Chicago.
Moffat, who is the Louis Block Professor in Biochemistry & Molecular Biology and a founding member of the Institute for Biophysical Dynamics at the University of Chicago, is recognized by the ACA for his work in pioneering ultrafast time resolved x-ray diffraction using synchrotron radiation to capture the function of fundamental protein processes at atomic resolution.
The Patterson Award was established in 1980 in honor of A. Lindo Patterson to recognize and encourage outstanding research in the structure of matter by diffraction methods, including significant contributions to the methodology of structure determination and/or innovative application of diffraction methods and/or elucidation of biological, chemical, geological or physical phenomena using new structural information. Throughout the past 60 years, the ACA has established 10 individual awards to recognize exceptional scientists who have made seminal contributions in the areas of scientific research, policy, and public outreach. Each individual award is typically presented only once every three years.
The Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory is one of five national synchrotron radiation light sources supported by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences (DOE-BES). The APS is the source of the Western Hemisphere’s brightest high-energy x-ray beams for research in virtually every scientific discipline. More than 3,500 scientists representing universities, industry, and academic institutions from every U.S. state and several foreign nations visit the APS each year to carry out applied and basic research in support of the BES mission to understand, predict, and ultimately control matter and energy at the electronic, atomic, and molecular levels in order to provide the foundations for new energy technologies and to support DOE missions in energy, environment, and national security. To learn more about the Office of Basic Energy Sciences and its x-ray user facilities.
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