Honors for de la Fuente, Mittag and De La Cruz

de la Fuente honored by ASM

César de la Fuente

César de la Fuente has received the American Society of Microbiology’s Award for Early Career Basic Research. This award recognizes an early career investigator with distinguished basic research achievements in the microbial sciences. Recipients are chosen by a selection committee from a competitive, peer-nominated list of candidates.

de la Fuente is a presidential associate professor of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. His lab develops computational methods to mine the world’s biological information to identify new antimicrobial compounds, and he has pioneered the emerging field of artificial intelligence–driven antibiotic discovery. de la Fuente has won many awards including the Fleming Prize, the Miklos Bondanszky Award and the Princess of Girona Prize. He is also a member of the Royal Academy of Pharmacology, a National Academy of Medicine’s Emerging Leaders in Health and Medicine Scholar and an American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering fellow.

“The ASM Awards and Prize Program recognizes microbiologists who have made significant contributions to advancing the microbial sciences,” ASM CEO Stefano Bertuzzi said.

Mittag and De La Cruz named BPS fellows

Tanja Mittag

Enrique De La Cruz

Tanja Mittag and Enrique M. De La Cruz have been named fellows by the Biophysical Society. This award honors the society’s distinguished members who have demonstrated excellence in science and contributed to the expansion of the biophysics field.

Mittag is a member of the department of structural biology at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Her lab explores the role of phase separation in functional compartmentalization and how dysregulation of this process can lead to cancer and neurodegenerative diseases. She has won many awards including the V Foundation Scholar Award and the Biophysical Society's Michael and Kate Bárány Award. She was a co-organizer of the 2022 ASBMB annual meeting session on protein machines and disorder. Mittag has been named a BPS fellow for her work on “molecular recognition and phase separation of intrinsically disordered proteins.”

De La Cruz is a professor of molecular biophysics and biochemistry, and he also serves as the head of Branford College, one of Yale’s undergraduate residential colleges. His lab uses biology, chemistry, physics and engineering techniques to study molecular motor proteins and the cytoskeleton. De La Cruz is an associate editor for the Journal of Biological Chemistry and was a member of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology’s inaugural class of fellows in 2021. He was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2022 and of the Connecticut Academy of Science in 2021. De La Cruz has been named a BPS fellow for his “pioneering research on the mechanisms of the actin cytoskeleton and molecular motor proteins.”