4th Annual Pariser-Parr Lecture in Chemistry: How to Simulate the Action of Complex Biological Systems on a Molecular Level

Speaker: Nobel Laureate Arieh Warshel

Arieh Warshel is a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Southern California, USC, where he holds the Dana and David Dornsife Chair in Chemistry. He was one of three scientists to win the 2013 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.
Professor Warshel pioneered the field of computational enzymology, helping develop computer simulations of the functions of biological systems that have allowed scientists to understand how life processes operate on the protein level. Marrying classical and quantum mechanics, he and colleagues Martin Karplus of Harvard University and Michael Levitt of Stanford University received the Nobel Prize for developing powerful computer models that researchers use to understand complex chemical interactions and create new drugs.
Professor Warshel was born on a kibbutz in Israel and earned his bachelor’s degree at the Technion in 1966, along with the Technion Award for the Best Third-Year Student in Chemistry. He went on to earn his master’s and doctoral degrees from the Weizmann Institute of Science, where he was a senior scientist and associated professor as well as an EMBO fellow at the MRC in Cambridge England, before joining the University of Southern California in 1976.
He is a member of the National Academy of Science, an Elected Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and an Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is widely published and has received numerous awards including The Israel Chemical Society Gold Medal, 2013, and The Founders Award of the Biophysical Society. He also received the Technion Honorary Doctorate in 2015.

Murray Hall Lecture room G202
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill