I'm writing to acknowledge the passing of Ward Smith during the weekend of 5
July. Ward got his PhD with Martha Ludwig at U. of Michigan, and then came to
UCLA in 1977 to join Dave Eisenberg’s group as a postdoc. During the course of
things, he met Cheryl Janson, a Paul Boyer postdoc, and they were married in
1980. During his time at UCLA Ward became expert in operation of the
Xuong/Hamlin/Nielsen multi-wire system at UCSD and tutored the UCLA users in
its use. In 1985 Ward and Cheryl left UCLA and went to Monsanto in St. Louis,
where Ward worked as a structural biologist. In 1987 they went to Agouron
Pharmaceuticals in San Diego. And then in 1995 went cross-country to SmithKline
Beecham (which became Glaxo SmithKline, merging with GlaxoWellcome).
Ward was very involved with getting IMCA set up as a functional facility for
pharmaceuticals at Argonne as SmithKline's representative. This experience gave
him significant credibility in synchrotron macromolecular crystallography, and
in 2003 he joined the GM/CA-CAT beamlines at the APS to help Bob Fischetti and
others construct that excellent facility. During this time Cheryl worked at
Shamrock Structures.
Ward moved to the NIH headquarters in 2007. There he took some responsibility
for the Protein Structure Initiative, also playing an important role in
supporting NIH synchrotron facilities. In 2010 he became the branch chief for
the Structural Genomics and Proteomics Technology Branch in the Division of
Cell Biology and Biophysics. He remained in that position through 2017. At the
2018 NIGMS re-organization Ward went to the Biophysics, Biomedical Technology,
and Computational Biosciences division as the branch chief for the Biomedical
Technology Branch.
Ward helped oversee the big NIH-funded, $45 M construction of three major
beamlines at NSLS-II, a project called ABBIX that ran 2011-2017. In 2017 he
became program director for NIH support of structural biology beamlines at
NSLS-II and other DOE synchrotrons.
Many knew Ward for his always calm, reasoned demeanor; he was unflappable,
resilient, and friendly. He was well read and devoted to his family.
================================================
Robert M. Sweet E-Dress: sw...@bnl.gov
Scientific Advisor, CBMS: The Center for BioMolecular
Structure at NSLS-II
Photon Sciences and Biology Dept
Brookhaven Nat'l Lab.
Upton, NY 11973 U.S.A.
Phones: 631 344 3401 (Office)
631 338 7302 (Mobile)
================================================
########################################################################
To unsubscribe from the CCP4BB list, click the following link:
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/WA-JISC.exe?SUBED1=CCP4BB&A=1
This message was issued to members of www.jiscmail.ac.uk/CCP4BB, a mailing list
hosted by www.jiscmail.ac.uk, terms & conditions are available at
https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/
