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NEWS RELEASE 5-25-10 Contacts: Chemistry professor awarded Founders’ Medal from international council AMES, Iowa – Mei Hong, Iowa State University professor of chemistry, was awarded the 2010 Founders’ Medal from the International Council on Magnetic Resonance in Biological Systems (ICMRBS). The medal will be presented to Hong at the ICMRBS conference in Cairns, Australia, in August. The award carries a $3,000 honorarium. The Founders’ Medal recognizes exceptional contributions by young scientists to the development and/or progress of the field of magnetic resonance in biological systems. ICMRBS noted Hong’s outstanding achievements in the field of solid-state NMR. Hong and her research team use high-resolution solid-state NMR spectroscopy to investigate the three-dimensional structure and dynamics of membrane proteins. She said the studies provide atomic-resolution information into how these proteins organize in the membrane, how they move, and how they interact with the lipids. “The Founders’ Medal is a nice validation that the research topics my colleagues and I pursue, which are often new and not much trodden by others in the field, are appreciated as important and interesting,” Hong said. “The medal is also an honor to my students and postdoctoral fellows, who did all the hard work.” As part of the award, Hong will deliver a plenary lecture at the ICMRBS conference on her studies of membrane protein structure and dynamics by solid-state NMR. In particular, she will talk about two structure determination projects: the influenza virus M2 protein and antimicrobial peptides. Hong said both studies have led to much better understanding of the mechanisms of action of these proteins. Hong has received multiple awards for her research, and serves on the organizing committees of the Experimental NMR Conference and the Rocky Mountain Conference on Analytical Chemistry, and on the editorial board of the Journal of Magnetic Resonance. -30-
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