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  Thomas Szyperski

By SUE WUETCHER

Published: September 16, 2010

Thomas Szyperski, professor in the Department of Chemistry, College of Arts and Sciences, has been named a UB Distinguished Professor.

The UB Distinguished Professor designation—not to be confused with the SUNY Distinguished Professor designation, a rank above that of full professor awarded by the SUNY trustees—was created by the Office of the Provost to recognize full professors who have achieved true distinction and who are leaders in their fields.

It is open to faculty members who have been a full professor for at least five years and who have achieved national or international prominence and a distinguished reputation within their field through significant contributions to the research/scholarly literature or through artistic performance or achievement in the fine arts.

A UB faculty member since 1998, Szyperski is internationally known for his pioneering development of novel techniques in applying multi-dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy to analyze protein structures. His work has transformed the field of structural biology by enabling scientists to more rapidly and more precisely obtain high-dimensional spectral data.

Director of UB's High-Field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Facility and an adjunct senior researcher at the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute, Szyperski is co-recipient of the prestigious Günther Laukien Prize, awarded to the best NMR spectroscopist under the age of 40, and has been named one of the "Scientific American 50” in recognition of his groundbreaking work.

While at UB, he has received nearly $8 million in grant funding, including major awards from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. He is the author or more than 120 publications—many of which have appeared in high-impact journals—and his research has led to six issued U.S. patents, several pending patents and several additional disclosures.

Szyperski, who holds joint appointments in the UB departments of Biochemistry and Structural Biology, twice has been named Niagara Frontier Inventor of the Year. In 2007, he was named a recipient of a SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Scholarship and Creative Activities.

Szyperski earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in chemistry from the Technical University of Munich, Germany, and a doctorate in biophysics from the Institute for Molecular Biology and Biophysics, ETH-Zürich, Switzerland.