Ohio University alum Dr. Venkatraman Ramakrishnan ’76PhD, who won a Nobel Prize in 2009, will give the Eugene P. Wigner Distinguished Lecture at Oak Ridge National Laboratories on July 28.
Ramakrishnan earned a Ph.D. in Physics from Ohio University.
Dr. Ramakrishnan is the joint head of the structural studies division at MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology (LMB) and a senior research fellow at Trinity College in Cambridge, England. His research determined the 30S ribosomal subunit and its complexes with antibiotics and ligands, as well as the entire 70S ribosome with mRNA and tRNA ligands. This work earned him the 2009 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, an award he shared with Thomas Steitz and Ada Yonath. Most recently, Ramakrishnan’s lab determined high-resolution structures of many functional states of the ribosome, providing further insight into its role in the decoding of mRNA, peptidyl transfer, translocation and termination.
Prior to LMB, Ramakrishnan was a professor at the University of Utah and a member of the biology division at Brookhaven National Laboratory. From 1982-1983, he worked on the research staff at ORNL, focusing on the biological neutron scattering effort with Ed Uberbacher and Gerry Bunick. He received a PhD in physics from Ohio University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University.
Hosted by ORNL’s Corporate Fellows, the Wigner Distinguished Lecture Series promotes dialogue among Oak Ridge researchers and renowned leaders in science, industry, and government.
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