Mark Hess

Headquarters, Washington, DC December 9, 1994

(Phone: 202/358-1776)

RELEASE: 94-206

DELUCAS NAMED SPACE STATION ACTING SENIOR SCIENTIST

Dr. Larry DeLucas, a former Space Shuttle payload

specialist and a noted expert in the field of protein
crystallography, has been named acting senior scientist for
the Space Station.

DeLucas will serve in this position for up to eight

months until the selection of a full-time senior scientist
is made. The senior scientist functions as the primary
advocate to the Space Station program for scientific users
of the permanent orbital laboratory, scheduled for launch
beginning in 1997.

"My primary objective is to broaden participation of

scientists in the Space Station," DeLucas said. "I'll
concentrate on making the Space Station 'user friendly' by
working with the engineers who design and build it to make
sure the Space Station has all the capabilities needed to
make it a world-class research facility for U.S. and
foreign partner scientists and technologists."

DeLucas holds several key positions at the University

of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), including director for
Macromolecular Crystallography, and director for the
Comprehensive Cancer Center X-ray Core Facility. He also
serves as a professor in the Department of Optometry.

As a payload specialist on the first United States

Microgravity Laboratory mission in June 1992, DeLucas
became the first protein crystallographer to grow protein
crystals while in space. This promising field of
biotechnology involves growing protein crystals that are
larger and of higher quality than those grown on Earth.
The superior quality of the space-grown protein crystals
allows researchers to see details of the atomic structure
more clearly, possibly leading to development of disease-
fighting drugs.

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DeLucas was born in Syracuse, NY. He holds five

degrees from UAB, including both a B.S. and M.S. in
chemistry, a B.S. in physiological optics, an O.D. in
optometry and a Ph.D. in biochemistry. He holds or has
applied for four patents related to growing protein
crystals in space and has published two books and over 50
papers in scientific journals on the subject.

The senior scientist position was created in the mid-

1980's when the Space Station program was started. The
position has always been a short-term assignment, so it can
be filled by scientists who can then return to their fields
of research when their duties are completed.

-end-

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