Pappu wins Provost Research Excellence Award

Rohit Pappu has been awarded the 2025 Provost Research Excellence Award from Washington University. This award recognizes exemplary researchers and scholars across the university.

Rohit Pappu

Pappu is a distinguished professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Washington University. He is also the director of the Center for Biomolecular Condensates, co-director of the Center for High Performance Computing and a member of the Hope Center for Neurological Disorders.

His lab aims to uncover how molecular matter is organized in space and time within cells. He focuses on the form, function and phase transitions of intrinsically disordered proteins, or IDPs, which lack a fixed 3D structure and instead exist as dynamic interconverting conformations. His lab combines computational biophysics, machine learning and biochemical experiments in isolation and in cells. Because IDPs are central to processes such as cell signaling, molecular recognition and protein regulation, his work has direct relevance to neurodegeneration and cancer.

Pappu won the 2025 American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology DeLano Award for Computational Biosciences. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, the Biophysical Society, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.