John Kuriyan facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
John Kuriyan
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John Kuriyan in 2015, portrait via the Royal Society
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| Institutions | Vanderbilt University School of Medicine |
| Thesis | The structure and flexibility of myoglobin : molecular dynamics and x-ray crystallography (1986) |
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John Kuriyan is a very important scientist who studies how tiny parts inside our bodies work. He is currently a top leader and professor at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. Before this, he worked at the University of California, Berkeley. He was also a scientist at Berkeley Lab and an investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, which is a big honor for scientists in the United States.
Learning Journey
John Kuriyan studied chemistry at Juniata College in Pennsylvania. He then earned his PhD in physical chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His main teachers there were Gregory Petsko and Martin Karplus.
What He Studies
After his PhD, Kuriyan did more research at Harvard for a year. Then he became a professor at the Rockefeller University. His laboratory studies the structure and function of tiny parts called enzymes and other proteins. These proteins help send signals inside cells and are important for copying DNA.
His team mainly uses a method called x-ray crystallography. This helps them figure out the 3-D shapes of proteins. They also use other methods to understand how these proteins work.
Awards and Special Honors
John Kuriyan has received many important awards for his work. In 1989, he was named a Pew Scholar in Biomedical Sciences. He also received the Lounsbery Award from the National Academy of Sciences in 2005.
Other awards include:
- The Cornelius Rhoads Memorial Award (1999)
- The Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry (1998)
- The Dupont-Merck Award (1997)
- The Schering-Plough Award (1994)
- The ASBMB Merck award (2009)
In 2015, he was chosen as a Foreign Member of the Royal Society. This is a very special honor from the United Kingdom. In 2018, he was also elected to the National Academy of Medicine.
Books He Wrote
- The molecules of life: physical and chemical principles (2013) – with Konforti, Boyana; Wemmer, David
- Mechanisms of RAS activation at the membrane (2006)
