Hi all

Howard successfully passed his Ph.D. thesis examination on 15 April 2003 and will be graduating from the University of Toronto Dept. of Biochemistry this June.

Please join me in plastering this thread with your congratulations to Howard, and to all of you my personal thanks for your help and efforts on Distributed Folding which has significantly contributed to Howard's Ph.D. Thesis.

The esteemed group of scientists that participated in Howard's Thesis defence is listed here with links to their research interests.
It was an impressive showing by Howard given this group of "interrogators".


Hue Sun Chan, Ph.D. Associate Professor, Dept. of Biochemistry, U. of Toronto
http://biochemistry.utoronto.ca/chan/bch.html

Regis Pomes, Ph.D. Hospital for Sick Children, Research Institute
and Assistant Professor, Dept. of Biochemistry, U. of Toronto
http://www.sickkids.on.ca/research/c...iles/pomes.asp

Julie Foreman-Kay,Ph.D. Hospital for Sick Children, Research Institute and Professor, Dept. of Biochemistry, U. of Toronto
http://www.sickkids.on.ca/research/c...forman-kay.asp

Emil Pai, Professor, Ph.D. Dept of Biochemistry, U. of Toronto
http://echo.med.utoronto.ca/

G. Andrew Wolley, Ph.D. Dept. of Chemistry, U. of Toronto
http://www.chem.utoronto.ca/people/a.../woolleya.html

C.I. Bayly, Ph.D. Merck Frosst, Montreal Canada (External Examiner)
http://www.merckfrosst.ca

This group included structural biology experimentalists, theoretical protein folding specialists, small and large molecule computational simulation and drug docking specialists. Their consensus was that Howard's thesis was excellent exciting and that they all looked forward to seeing our work in future publications. I would also say that there was quite a bit of excitement when Howard showed off the new protein folding movies generated by the beta test DF system.

I am, personally very proud of Howard. Howard has accepted my offer for a full-time position as Postdoctoral Fellow and Senior Software developer in the Blueprint Initiative and he will continue sheperding Distributed Folding for the next few months as we roll in some additional staff to do new experiments using the beta that Howard has crafted, of course with your help. In the near future Howard will be shifting more of his efforts and talents to help us transfer elements DF technology into the public BIND database initiative (www.bind.ca).


Christopher Hogue, Ph.D
Samuel Lunenfeld Research Institute, Mt. Sinai Hospital and
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Biochemistry, University of Toronto