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 principal staff scientists of the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute, Inc., an internationally renowned biocrystallographic research center headed by Herbert Hauptman, Nobel Laureate in Chemistry in 1985. The Institute and Department are housed in a beautiful new building on the Buffalo-Niagara Medical Campus, adjacent to the new building complex that houses the UB Center of Excellence in Bioinformatics and Life Sciences and the Roswell Park Cancer Institute Centers for Genetics and Pharmacology. The structural biology faculty also includes some members cross-appointed from these neighboring centers and from other UB departments.

    One track of the structural biology Ph.D. program includes the first year cell and molecular biology and biochemistry courses of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Biomedical Sciences. In their second year, students study core courses in the methods of structural biology, and throughout their program of study and research students take part in departmental seminars. By the beginning of their second year, students choose a thesis or dissertation research topic and faculty advisor, and commence their degree research. For admission to degree candidacy, students are required to present and orally defend a written proposal for their degree research project, and pass a comprehensive oral examination issuing from the oral proposal presentation.

     The Ph.D. dissertation research must represent an original investigation designed to contribute to new knowledge and understanding of biomolecular form and function or new methodology for research in structural biology. It is expected that the research will normally lead to publication in prominent refereed journals of one or more research papers of which the student is the principal author