The Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute, an internationally renowned biocrystallographic research center headed by Herbert Hauptman (1985 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry), has received funds from KeyBank to allow the offering of a graduate fellowship to a minority student in the Department of Structural Biology, a department of the UB School of Medicine and Biological Sciences.
 
The focus of the UB/HWI Structural Biology Department is biological form and function at the level of the three-dimensional atomic architecture of biological macromolecules and macromolecular assemblies.  The department’s program of graduate studies provides thorough training in the principles and practice of the main methodologies of structural molecular biology, namely: protein expression, purification, and crystallization; X-ray diffraction crystallography; nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy; and computational structural modeling.  The core faculty of the Structural Biology Department is comprised of the Institute's principal staff scientists.  The Institute and Department are housed in a beautiful new building on the Buffalo-Niagara Medical Campus adjacent to the UB Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences and the Roswell Park Cancer Institute's Centers for Genetics and Pharmacology.  The structural biology faculty also includes some members who are cross-appointed from these neighboring centers and from other UB bioscience departments.

One track of the structural biology Ph.D. program includes the first year cell biology, molecular biology and biochemistry courses of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Biomedical Sciences (http://www.smbs.buffalo.edu/rbe/igpbs/program.htm). In their second year, students study core courses in the methods of structural biology, and, throughout their program of study and research, they take part in departmental research and literature seminars. By the beginning of their second year, students choose a thesis or dissertation research topic and faculty advisor, and they commence their research.  For admission to degree candidacy, students are required to present and defend orally a written proposal concerning their research project and to pass a comprehensive oral examination issuing from the oral proposal presentation.  The Ph.D. dissertation research must represent an original investigation designed to contribute new knowledge and understanding of biomolecular form and function or to develop new methodology for research in structural biology.  It is expected that this research will normally lead to publication, in prominent refereed journals, of one or more research papers of which the student is the principal author.

For further information, use the buttons on the side bar or contact Prof. Robert H. Blessing, Director of Graduate Studies (email: blessing@hwi.buffalo.edu; phone: 716-898-8613).