Passion for Proteins Earns Top Honor

Without small heat shock proteins, we couldn’t survive. Despite their name, these molecules play a much larger role than simply responding to heat stress. They’re critical in our responses to infection, toxins, oxygen deprivation and more. As part of our cellular repair system, they help new proteins form and help dispose of old ones. And researchers understand this complex science thanks largely to professor Elizabeth Vierling in the UA Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics. Vierling’s early research on these under-studied molecules expanded the field dramatically, earning her a Guggenheim Fellowship, the prestigious Humboldt Senior Research Fellowship, continuous funding from the NIH and NSF and now, a Regents’ Professorship, the highest honor conferred on faculty by The University of Arizona.