Libin Rong's paper wins award

Assistant Professor and CBR member Libin Rong, of the Department of Mathematics and Statistics, has been awarded the 2012 Leon Heller Postdoctoral Publication Prize in Theoretical Physics. This $500 prize is awarded for the best article describing work performed primarily during the tenure of a postdoctoral appointment at the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Rong was a post doc at Los Alamos working with Dr. Alan Perelson before coming to Oakland University in January, 2010.

Rong published his award-winning paper titled “Rapid Emergence of Protease Inhibitor Resistance in Hepatitis C Virus” in Science Translational Medicine (2:30ra32, 2010). In only two years, this paper has been cited 43 times. In the same journal issue, David Wyles and Robert Schooley published an editorial about Rong’s paper, titled “Rong’s Numbers: Accelerating Progress in HCV Therapeutic Research.” They wrote

“Rong’s mathematical model has provided both new insights into the pathophysiology of HCV infection and a rational framework for continuing efforts to develop PEG-interferon/ribavirin–free treatment regimens for HCV. It is encouraging to hear support from regulatory agencies for combination HCV therapy and expedited timetables for patient populations with the greatest medical need. It is now time to push the HCV therapeutic research envelope with well-planned, hypothesis-driven clinical trials that are supported by state-of-the-art translational research tools and mathematical modeling. Such rigorously planned therapeutic trials enable us to investigate the disease while simultaneously investigating the drugs, as was done 15 years ago in HIV therapeutic research; and just look where that has gotten us.”