Media Advisory: Prize-winning Conversation -- Nobel Laureate Chats With UB and HWI Students

Students in the sciences at the University at Buffalo and Hauptman Woodward Medical Research Institute will have a chance to chat with 2009 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry Ada E. Yonath April 8 at 4:40 p.m. in the UB Center for the Arts atrium on the North Campus.

Members of the media are invited to attend a short media briefing at 4:30 p.m., followed by a roundtable discussion, where Yonath will share her inspirational story of achievement with the next generation of scientists, currently studying at UB and HWI.

Yonath is the fourth woman ever, and the first in 40 years, to receive chemistry's highest international honor.

SUNY Distinguished Professor Phillip Coppens has known Yonath since the 1970s when she was a student at the Weizmann Institute. Bill Duax, Hauptman Distinguished Scientist at HWI also knows her professionally. They invited her to Buffalo soon after her Nobel Prize was announced last October.

Yonath is Martin S. and Helen Kimmel Professor of Structural Biology at the Weizmann Institute in Israel. She won the Nobel Prize for determining the structure of the cell's colossal "protein factory" called the ribosome. Her findings are being used to develop new antibiotics that target the ribosomes of pathogens.

The briefing will take place April 8 at 4:30 p.m. in the UB Center for the Arts atrium on the North Campus. It will include remarks by Jorgé V. José, PhD, UB vice president for research; UB chemistry professor Coppens; Eaton E. Lattman, PhD, HWI executive director and chief executive officer and Yonath. A member of the Tieckelmann family also will speak. Yonath's scientific talk at UB is the 2010 Howard Tieckelmann Memorial Lecture.

One-on-one interviews with Yonath will be available upon request.

For press arrangements, contact Ellen Goldbaum in the UB Office of University Communications at 645-4605 and onsite at 771-9255.