Future structural genomics initiatives: an interview with Helen Berman, director of the Protein Data Bank

Abstract

Helen M. Berman (HMB, pictured) is a Board of Governors Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Her research area is structural biology and bioinformatics, with a special focus on protein–nucleic acid interactions. She is the founder of the Nucleic Acid Database, a repository of information about the structures of nucleic acid-containing molecules; and is the co-founder and Director of the Protein Data Bank, the international repository of the structures of biological macromolecules. She is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and of the Biophysical Society, from which she received the Distinguished Service Award in 2000. A past president of the American Crystallographic Association, she is a recipient of the Buerger Award (2006). Dr. Berman received her A. B. in 1964 from Barnard College and a Ph.D. in 1967 from the University of Pittsburgh.