BUFFALO, NY, April 10, 2003 - - - - - Dr. Herbert A. Hauptman, president & namesake of the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute (HWI) is being honored on Saturday, April 12, 2003, at the University of Maryland’s Fourth Annual Alumni Association Awards Gala in College Park, MD. He will be presented with the President’s Distinguished Alumnus Award, which is given annually to a University of Maryland alumnus who has achieved national recognition for excellence in his profession or field. Dr. Hauptman received his Ph.D. in mathematics from the University in 1955
A member of the HWI staff since 1970 and a mathematician by training, Dr. Herbert A. Hauptman was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1985 for his development of the formula known as “direct methods”, where his application of classical mathematics finally resolved an issue that had defeated generations of chemists. Utilizing the direct methods technique, the structures of thousands of molecules have now been solved and new structures are added to the list each year. As a result, many new drugs to combat some of society’s deadliest diseases, heart disease, cancer, and high blood pressure, have now been designed.

Dr. Hauptman’s current work builds on his Nobel-winning research. In 2001, he and his colleagues in the Structural Biology Department at HWI received a five-year, $5.9 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to develop new and more powerful methods of structure determination. This project will expedite structure analysis and facilitate investigations having a high impact in the areas of genomics, proteomics, bioinformatics, structure function analysis, and drug design. A computer program, SnB, has already been designed and is currently used by crystallographers worldwide.

A Western New York center for basic biomedical research since 1956, the Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute is a world-renowned, independent, non-profit facility located in the heart of the newly emerging Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus. Our basic research mission is two-fold; committing ourselves to improving the health of people for generations to come by studying the causes of diseases at their basic molecular level and working to educate the scientists of tomorrow.