Professor David Eisenberg has been awarded the first Switzer Prize for Biomedical Discovery.
The Switzer prize is in honor of Irma and Norman Switzer, whose estate gave an unrestricted gift of $50 million to the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA to advance research in medicine and health. The purpose of the prize is to honor researchers whose contributions in the broad field of biomedical science are deemed worthy of special recognition. The prize consists of an honorarium and a citation, and was presented to Professor Eisenberg at the 55th School of Medicine’s Annual Lectureship in November 2014.
Professor Eisenberg is the Paul D. Boyer Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. He currently serves as a HHMI Investigator and served as Director of the UCLA-DOE Institute for Genomics and Proteomics from July, 1993 to June, 2014. Professor Eisenberg has received the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award, John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, the UCLA Faculty Research Lectureship, the Stein and Moore Award of the Protein Society and the American Chemical Society’s Faculty Mentoring Award. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the Institute of Medicine.
The Eisenberg research group focus on protein interactions. In their experiments they study the structural basis for conversion of normal proteins to the amyloid state and conversion of prions to the infectious state. In bioinformatic work, they derive information on protein interactions from genomic and proteomic data, and design inhibitors of amyloid toxicity.
