Ada Yonath is focusing on protein biosynthesis, on antibiotics hampering them, on human diseases associated with ribosomal mutations and on origin of life. She is Directing Kimmelman Center for Biomolecular Structures at Weizmann Institute (WIS), where she got her PhD and is currently a Professor. She postdoced in Carnegie Mellon, MIT and U. Chicago. In the seventies, she established at WIS the first structural-biology laboratory in Israel, which was the only one in the country for almost a decade. During 1986-2004 she headed Max-Planck-Research-Unit-for Ribosome-Structure in Hamburg, in parallel to her WIS activities.
Among others, she is a member of US-National Academy; British Royal Society; Israel Academy; German Leopoldina; Pontificia Accademia-delle-Scienze (Vatican); Japanese, Korean, Polish and Italian Academies, and holds honorary doctorates from over 45 Universities worldwide. Her awards include Louisa-Gross-Horwitz, Wolf, Harvey & Israel prizes; Linus-Pauling Gold Medal; UNESCO/L’Oreal Award; Albert-Einstein Award for Excellence; and 2009 Chemistry Nobel Prize.