Lasse Lindahl, Ph.D., professor and chair of the UMBC Department of Biological Sciences, has received a 2002 Wilson H. Elkins Professorship from the University System of Maryland. The award recognizes Lindahl's contributions as a preeminent scientist and internationally known scholar in the area of ribosome biogenesis.

The award will help UMBC maintain and advance its leadership in the life sciences by enabling Lindahl to devote more time to the University's new bioinformatics undergraduate program while continuing his research into ribosomes, the cellular machines that translate genetic code into proteins.

The Wilson H. Elkins Professorship was established in 1978 as the first permanently endowed, university-wide professorship at the University of Maryland. The professorship perpetuates the name and contributions of Elkins, a former Rhodes scholar who led the University of Maryland to new levels of distinction as its president from 1954 to 1978.

UMBC has won an Elkins professorship for the past three years, dating back to FY 2000. The University's 2001 award supported the appointment of Arlin J. Krueger as a visiting professor in the Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology and the Department of Physics. In 2000, UMBC's award supported the appointment of Professor Royce Hanson as a visiting professor in the Policy Sciences Graduate Program.

Lindahl is collaborating with several other faculty members at UMBC, including. G. Rickey Welch, Dean, College of Arts & Sciences, and Jonathan Bell, Chair of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, to organize a Center for Bioinformatics Research. This center will promote interdisciplinary studies and education in exploration of genomic sequences of a variety of organisms for both applied and basic science purposes. The center will employ a small interdisciplinary scientific staff with backgrounds in mathematics, statistics, biology, and computer science.

Lindahl holds a Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Copenhagen, Denmark. He did postdoctoral work in molecular biology at the University of Wisconsin. Lindahl and his wife, Janice Zengel, a Senior Research Scientist in UMBC's Biology department, are currently collaborating on research studying the detailed molecular mechanisms for ribosome biogenesis in both bacteria and yeast. These processes require synthesis of over 50 components in appropriate amounts followed by assembly of all parts into functional ribosomes. For more information on Lindahl's work, visit: http://www.umbc.edu/biosci/Faculty/lindahl.html.