On September 23, 2024, Yale MB&B’s Professor Enrique M. De La Cruz was selected as one of seven elected Fellows of the Biophysical Society (BPS). Dr. De La Cruz was named a 2025 BPS Fellow for pioneering research on the mechanisms of the actin cytoskeleton and molecular motor proteins. This award celebrates the Society’s distinguished members who have demonstrated excellence in science and contributed to the expansion of the field of biophysics. Dr. De La Cruz will be honored at the Biophysical Society’s 69th Annual Meeting, held in Los Angeles, California in February 2025.
Founded in 1958, the Biophysical Society is a professional and innovative community of scientists working at the interface of physical and life sciences. De La Cruz became a member as a first-year graduate student in 1994 and has participated in and presented at annual BPS conferences for nearly 30 years. Additionally, he served as a chair of a BPS subgroup, organized the national meeting in 2015, served and chaired on their nominating committee, and even served on the editorial board of the Biophysical Journal. In 2017, the BPS awarded De La Cruz the Emily M. Gray Award in education for “deep commitment to the promotion of diversity in science and education in biophysics and tireless efforts as an inspiring ambassador for biophysics.”
De La Cruz is excited to become a Fellow, appreciating that some of his best theoretical and modeling work was published in the Biophysical Journal. He is most proud of a mesoscopic, mathematical model of an actin filament that allowed him to identify the geometric origins of the filament mechanical properties, including the discovery of twist-bend coupling, which we can now appreciate as an attribute of actin filaments that dictates their function in cells (De La Cruz et al, 2010).
MB&B is proud of Dr. De La Cruz for this outstanding achievement. Congratulations, Dr. De La Cruz!
Read more on the BPS 2025 Society Fellows here.
Written by Shravani Balaji