Ram Samudrala

The University of Washington

Brief Biography

Ram Samudrala is an Associate Professor at the University of Washington. He researches protein and proteome structure, function, interaction, design, and evolution spanning atomic to organismal levels of description. His work has led to more than 100 total publications in journals such as Science, Nature, PLoS Biology, the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and the Journal of the American Medical Association, with a H-index of 30, as well as freely copiable software and web servers for molecular and systems modelling (which are being used on high-performance Linux-based computing clusters that he has pioneered) at <compbio.washington.edu>.

Samudrala received a Searle Scholar Award which funds exceptional young scientists in 2002, was named one of the world's top young innovators (TR100) by MIT Technology Review in 2003, and was selected to present the University of Washington New Investigator Science in Medicine Lecture in 2004. In 2005, he received a NSF CAREER Award which recognizes "outstanding scientists and engineers who show exceptional potential for leadership at the frontiers of knowledge". In 2008, he received the Alberta Heritage Foundation for Medical Research Visiting Scientist Award. That same year, he was awarded honorary diplomas from the cities of Casma and Yautan, Peru, for his work on vaccine discovery. He was a NIH Director's Pioneer Award finalist in 2006 (25/465 applicants were selected as finalists) for a novel idea to determine the structures of all proteins in a solution that he then presented at the seventh community wide assessment of protein structure prediction methods (CASP7). In 2010, he was again selected as a finalist and went on to receive the Pioneer Award for a completely different project, the CANDO drug discovery pipeline.