R&D 100 Award Presented to Life Sciences Division Staff (October 2001)

Dr. Ying Xu and Dr. Dong Xu, both scientists in the Life Sciences Division's Protein Structure Group in the Computaional Biology Program, were recently awarded an R&D 100 Award for the Protein Structure Prediction and Evaluation Computer Toolkit (PROSPECT).

The toolkit is a suite of computational tools designed to predict three-dimenstional structures of proteins from their amino acid sequences. Knowledge of these highly specific three-dimensional structures is vital to the study of disease, the development of drugs and research.

This award was one of two R&D 100 Awards presented to researchers and engineers at ORNL in 2001. This brings the total number of R&D 100 awards won by ORNL to 109 since the awards began in 1963. The awards are presented annually by R&D Magazine in recognition of the year's most significant technological innovations.

Previous winners from Life Sciences (and its predecessors, Biology and Health Sciences Research) include:

1980 – D. D. Shuresko, J. E. Mrochek, W. W. Pitt, Jr., G. K. Schulze, M. S. Blair, M. L. Bauer, R. G. Phillips, W. A. Walker, and R. W. Wood for "Portable Fluorescence Spotter"

1981 – Paul Caldwell and Ed T. Arakawa for "Extreme Ultraviolet Monochromator"

1981 – Tuan Vo-Dinh for "Passive PNA Vapor Monitor"

1983 – John Miller, Bob Compton, and Dewey Cooper for "Vacumn Ultraviolet Spectrometer"

1984 – C. H. Chen, G. S. Hurst, S. D. Kramer, M. G. Payne, S. L. Allman, and R. C. Phillips for "Rare Gas Atom Counter"

1986 – T. A. Callcott, E. T. Arakawa, D. L. Ederer, and K. L. Tsang for "Portable Fluorescence Spotter"

1987 – C. H. Chen, M. P. McCann, and S. D. Kramer for "Crystal Laser Monitor"

1987 – Tuan Vo-Dinh, Michael J. Sepaniak, Guy D. Griffin, Kathleen R. Ambrose, and Bruce J. Tromberg for "Fiber-Optic Fluoroimmuno Sensor"

1989 – Tom L. Ferrell, R. C. Reddick, and Bruce Warmack for "Photon Scanning Tunneling Microscope"

1990 –P. C. Srivastava and John Allred for "Iodophenylmaleimide Radioimmunoconjugator"

1990 – Abu B. Ahmed, Rhonda S. Bogard, and Mark Buckner for "Harshaw Model 8800 Thermoluminescent Dosimetry System"

1992 – F. C. Chen, Steve L. Allman, and Winston Chen for "CFC HFC Ratiometer"

1992 – Tuan Vo-Dinh and David L. Stokes for "Surface-Enhanced Raman Optical Data Storage (SERODS) System"

1993 – Peter Mazur for "Cryopreservation of Drosophila (Process)"

1994 – Tuan Vo-Dinh, A. Pal, T. Pal, and L. Ramirez for "Luminescence Spot Test for PCBs"

1996 – Thomas Thundat, Eric Wachter, Rick Oden, Panos Datskos, and Bruce Warmack for "MMVS 100 and NMT (Microcantilever Mercury – Vapor Sensor and Noncontact Micromechanical Thermometer)"

1996 – Tuan Vo-Dinh, Kelly S. Houck, and David L. Stokes for "Surface-Enhanced Raman Gene (SERGen) Probe"

1996 – H. Craig Dees for "GENCELL 101: A New Alkaline Cellulose"

1997 – Emory Collins, Saed Mirzadeh, and Russ Knapp for "Modular Technetium-99m Concentrator"

1999 – Tuan Vo-Dinh, A. L. Wintenberg, M. N. Ericson, J. P. Alarie, N. Isola, Minoo Askari, and Gorgon Miller for "The Multifunctional Biochip"