Akos Vertes is a Hungarian-American professor of

chemistry Chemistry is the scientific study of the properties and behavior of matter. It is a physical science within the natural sciences that studies the chemical elements that make up matter and chemical compound, compounds made of atoms, molecules a ...

biochemistry Biochemistry, or biological chemistry, is the study of chemical processes within and relating to living organisms. A sub-discipline of both chemistry and biology, biochemistry may be divided into three fields: structural biology, enzymology, a ...

and

molecular biology Molecular biology is a branch of biology that seeks to understand the molecule, molecular basis of biological activity in and between Cell (biology), cells, including biomolecule, biomolecular synthesis, modification, mechanisms, and interactio ...

at the

George Washington University The George Washington University (GW or GWU) is a Private university, private University charter#Federal, federally-chartered research university in Washington, D.C., United States. Originally named Columbian College, it was chartered in 1821 by ...

and a Doctor of the

Hungarian Academy of Sciences The Hungarian Academy of Sciences ( , MTA) is Hungary’s foremost and most prestigious learned society. Its headquarters are located along the banks of the Danube in Budapest, between Széchenyi rakpart and Akadémia utca. The Academy's primar ...

Early life and career

Vertes was born in

Budapest Budapest is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns of Hungary, most populous city of Hungary. It is the List of cities in the European Union by population within city limits, tenth-largest city in the European Union by popul ...

, Hungary. He graduated from the Veres Pálné Gimnázium in 1971 and then got his B.S. and Ph.D. in chemistry from the

Eötvös Loránd University Eötvös Loránd University (, ELTE, also known as ''University of Budapest'') is a Hungarian public research university based in Budapest. Founded in 1635, ELTE is one of the largest and most prestigious public higher education institutions in ...

in 1974 and 1979 respectively. In 1979 he was appointed research associate at the Hungarian Central Research Institute for Physics and in 1987 was promoted to senior research associate; from 1986 to 1989 he served as its Deputy Head. Until 1991 was an assistant professor at the

University of Antwerp The University of Antwerp () is a major Belgian university located in the city of Antwerp. The official abbreviation is ''UAntwerp''. The University of Antwerp has about 20,000 students, which makes it the third-largest university in Flanders. ...

in Belgium. In 1991 he immigrated to the United States and was hired by the

as an associate professor of

Analytical chemistry Analytical skill, Analytical chemistry studies and uses instruments and methods to Separation process, separate, identify, and Quantification (science), quantify matter. In practice, separation, identification or quantification may constitute t ...

. and was promoted to professor in 2000 and to Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology in 2003. In 1997 he became deputy chair of its Department of Chemistry. In 2002 he founded the W. M. Keck Institute for Proteomics Technology and Applications in

Washington, D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

and became co-director. From 2003 to 2008 he also worked as an adjunct professor at the

National Institutes of Health The National Institutes of Health (NIH) is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in 1887 and is part of the United States Department of Health and Human Service ...

Bethesda, Maryland Bethesda () is an unincorporated, census-designated place in southern Montgomery County, Maryland, United States. Located just northwest of Washington, D.C., it is a major business and government center of the Washington metropolitan region ...

. In 2014 Akos led GWU's

Columbian College of Arts and Sciences The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences (known as Columbian College or CCAS) is the College of Arts and Sciences, college of liberal arts and sciences of the George Washington University, in Washington, D.C. CCAS is the largest school at George ...

team to investigate chemical and biological threats.

Research and inventions

In 2008 Akos Vertes had worked with Peter Nemes to develop laser ablation electrospray ionization (LAESI) for mass spectrometry (MS), a miniature version of the previous lasers requiring only a desk-sized space in the lab. Four years later this technology, which in the future became known as the LAESI-DP 1000 Direct Ionization System, was ranked as one of the 100 most technologically significant products of 2012 by the ''R&D Magazine'' and was ranked top 10 invention by '' The Scientist''. In 2009 Vertes and colleagues applied the LAESI-MS technology for the analysis of single living cells. In 2012 he worked with Protea Biosciences to develop a laser-based analytical system that can detect

explosive An explosive (or explosive material) is a reactive substance that contains a great amount of potential energy that can produce an explosion if released suddenly, usually accompanied by the production of light, heat, sound, and pressure. An ex ...

s and

illegal drugs Illegal may refer to: Law * Violation of law ** Crime In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a State (polity), state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and uni ...

. In 2015 he had created a nano-device called REDIchip that, in combination with MS, was capable to detect materials made up of as little as 100,000 molecules.

Awards

*2007 – Oscar and Shoshana Trachtenberg Prize *2012 – Hillebrand Award *2013 – Fellow of the

National Academy of Inventors The National Academy of Inventors (NAI) is a US non-profit organization dedicated to encouraging inventors in academia, following the model of the National Academies of the United States. It was founded at the University of South Florida in 201 ...

*2016 – Distinguished Researcher Award, awarded by

The George Washington University The George Washington University (GW or GWU) is a private federally-chartered research university in Washington, D.C., United States. Originally named Columbian College, it was chartered in 1821 by the United States Congress and is the first ...

*2022 – Elected Fellow of the

American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is a United States–based international nonprofit with the stated mission of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific responsib ...

*2025 – Elected External Member of the

, Hungary (MTA)

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Vertes, Akos 1950s births Living people American molecular biologists Hungarian biochemists Eötvös Loránd University alumni Columbian College of Arts and Sciences faculty George Washington University faculty Members of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences Scientists from Budapest 20th-century American biochemists 21st-century American biochemists Year of birth missing (living people) Hungarian emigrants to the United States