Rice alum wins coveted White House award
Erica Ollmann Saphire ’93 wins Presidential Early Career Award

RICE NEWS AND STAFF REPORTS

Rice alumna Erica Ollmann Saphire ’93, associate professor of immunology and microbial sciences at the Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, Calif., has been selected to receive a prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on young professionals at the outset of their independent research careers.

	MICHAEL BALDERAS
	Erica Ollmann Saphire, front, has been selected to receive a prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. She is pictured with her research assistant Dafna Abelson.

“These extraordinarily gifted young scientists and engineers represent the best in our country,” President Barack Obama said of this year’s PECASE winners. “With their talent, creativity and dedication, I am confident that they will lead their fields in new breakthroughs and discoveries and help us use science and technology to lift up our nation and our world.”

Ollmann Saphire’s research program combines X-ray crystallography, biochemistry and immunology to analyze proteins that play key roles in the pathogenesis of Ebola and other viral hemorrhagic fevers. Her lab’s analyses of the structures of these proteins provide templates for vaccine design and enable rapid responses to newly emerging forms of the viruses. Last year, Ollmann Saphire and colleagues determined the structure of a critical protein from the Ebola virus, which, though rare, is one of the deadliest viruses on the planet and kills between 50 and 90 percent of those it infects.

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Earlier this year, Ollmann Saphire was awarded the prestigious Burroughs Wellcome Fund Investigator in the Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease award, which supports the career of a researcher who is working on understanding the interactions between human host and infectious agent.

Ollmann Saphire said one of the formative moments in her career occurred in the first X-ray crystallography class she took as an undergraduate biochemistry major at Rice.

“I remember sitting in my class thinking, ‘Oh … now I get it!'” Ollmann Saphire said in a 2008 profile on the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Web site. ”If you solve the crystal structure, you know the location of every single atom in the protein and how much it moves from that position. It seems like you know everything there is to know about it. You know how it folds up. You know where the chinks in its armor are. It’s just an overwhelming level of information, and information on an order that I just found immensely satisfying.”

Ollmann Saphire double-majored in biology and biochemistry, and she said her research program at Scripps reflects the full range of her undergraduate research experience at Rice. In particular, she said fieldwork she conducted with Rice ecologists helped prepare her for fieldwork on viruses in Thailand, Sierra Leone, Cambodia and Gabon.

“I was able to pick up research hours every summer and get into biochemistry, molecular biology and ecology,” Ollmann Saphire said. “That breadth of research allowed me to formulate a research program in which we do everything from tromp around in the mud in Africa to understand the ecology of the virus outbreak, all the way to the molecular biophysics of the viruses’ structure.”

Ollmann Saphire also worked as an undergraduate research assistant in the laboratory of biochemist Kathleen Matthews, the Stewart Memorial Professor of Biochemistry and Cell Biology.

“Erica was curious and wanted to learn a lot about things as an undergraduate,” Matthews said. “She’s just one of those globally astounding people, with a keen intellect, deep curiosity and a willingness to work hard.”

The Presidential Early Career Awards recognize and nurture some of the nation’s finest scientists and engineers who, while early in their research careers, show exceptional potential for leadership at the frontiers of scientific knowledge during the 21st century. Awardees are nominated by a number of federal departments, and winners are selected based on two criteria: innovative research at the frontiers of science and technology, and community service demonstrated through scientific leadership, education or community outreach.

The new PECASE honorees will receive their awards at the White House this fall. They will also receive research grants for up to five years to further their investigations.