Single-particle cryo-electron microscopy: the visualization of biological molecules in their native states

Joachim Frank is a Professor of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics, and a Professor of the Department of Biological Sciences at Columbia University. He received his Ph.D. from the Technical University in Munich and, in 1975, joined the Wadsworth Center in Albany as a Senior Research Scientist. In 1985, he joined the faculty of the Department of Biomedical Sciences in the newly founded School of Public Health of SUNY Albany.  In 2008 he moved to New York to assume his current positions.  Dr. Frank’s lab has developed techniques of electron microscopy and single-particle reconstruction of biological macromolecules, specializing in mathematical and computational approaches.  He has applied these techniques of visualization to explore the structure and dynamics of the ribosome during the process of protein synthesis.

Dr. Frank is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and of the American Academy of Microbiology.  He is also a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  He was recently honored for his contributions to the development of cryogenic electron microscopy of biological molecules and the study of protein synthesis with the 2014 Franklin Medal for Life Science.  In 2017 he shared the Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences with Richard Henderson and Marin van Heel.  He was awarded the 2017 Nobel Prize in Chemistry together with Richard Henderson and Jacques Dubochet.