He will receive his award in St. Louis on Saturday, February 18, during the 2006 Annual Meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the worlds largest general scientific society, which publishes Science.

"First, Ahmet has improved single molecule fluorescence by developing a technique that can locate the position of a single dye to within 1.5 nanometers, which is 20 times better than has previously been achieved and 200 times better than the classical diffraction limit of light," said Professor Paul R. Selvin, who supervised his graduate work at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. "Ahmet then applied this technique to measure how Myosin V, a biomolecular motor involved in intracellular transport, moves."

Ahmet Yildiz received the grand prize for his essay, "Elucidating the Mechanism of Molecular Motor Movement." Yildiz grew up in Sakarya, Turkey. In 2001, he received a bachelors degree in physics from Bogazici University, Istanbul, and started his graduate studies in biophysics at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

"Science is delighted to name Ahmet Yildiz as a Grand Prize winner in the 2006 Young Scientist Award competition," said Donald Kennedy, editor-in-chief of Science. "After his arrival at the University of Illinois from his native Turkey, Yildiz developed a new technique for fluorescence imaging that allowed him to identify the walking mechanism used by protein motors in living cells."

Working in the research group of Paul Selvin, he developed the technique of fluorescence imaging with one-nanometer accuracy (FIONA). This work was recognized with a Foresight Institute Distinguish
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Contact: Natasha Pinol
npinol@aaas.org
202-326-7088
American Association for the Advancement of Science
9-Feb-2006