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With great pleasure, we dedicate this special issue of Applied Magnetic Resonance to Wayne L. Hubbell, Jules Stein Professor of Ophthalmology and Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California—Los Angeles (UCLA) and member of the National Academy of Sciences, in honor of his 80th birthday.

Wayne received his B.S. in chemistry from Oregon State University in 1965 and his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Stanford University in 1970 in the laboratory of Harden McConnell. He started his independent career as a faculty member in the Department of Chemistry at the University of California—Berkeley (UC Berkeley) and then moved to UCLA in 1983 to become the first Jules Stein Professor of Ophthalmology and a Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

Wayne is a pioneer in the field of site-directed spin labeling (SDSL) electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy to study the structure and conformational dynamics of proteins and membranes. In recognition of his contributions, he has received a plethora of prestigious awards and honors, most notably the International EPR (ESR) Society Gold Medal, the International Zavoisky Award from the Physical-Technical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the Bruker Prize from the Royal Society of Chemistry-ESR Group, and fellowships in the National Academy of Sciences, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Also, Wayne was elected to the first class of fellows of the Biophysical Society and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Pécs, Hungary.

Wayne mentored more than two dozen undergraduate students, three dozen graduate students, and three dozen postdoctoral fellows over the course of his UC Berkeley and UCLA careers. He has also established and fostered an extensive network of collaborators across numerous scientific fields and made countless friends.

Although we cannot document everyone’s appreciation and gratefulness to Wayne in a single preface, we include here a quote from a longtime friend and our own brief remarks:

“Dear Wayne,

You are one of my favorite scientific role models. We both survived McConnell’s lab, which made us tough. And we had some fun exploring the desert together. Best wishes for the next 80 years!”.

Dave Thomas

“As his 32nd postdoc, I was deeply impressed and influenced by Wayne during my postdoc career and my independent career after that. The first suggestion from Wayne was to focus on science and develop approaches to solve scientific problems, without worrying about the number and impact factors of papers coming from the science we do. This was a critical suggestion to me as a young, ambitious, but also nervous postdoc, who was eager to explore the scary academic field and develop my independent career. Wayne observed my nervousness immediately and had a short but extremely efficient conversation with me. I then became more focused and more motivated in researching my projects as well as exploring new areas.

The second influence Wayne put on me was to encourage instead of criticize my work, which truly improved my motivation and working efficiency. This has now become my way of mentoring graduate students. Lastly, Wayne taught me to never be afraid of challenges in science. He is always able to focus on problems and discover solutions, no matter what it takes.”

Zhongyu Yang

“I am so grateful for the skills I learned as a postdoc in the Hubbell lab. I first learned the art of grant writing from Wayne, a skill that has paid dividends many times over in my independent career. I also learned to try to anticipate different potential experimental outcomes to be better prepared for follow-up experiments, also a skill I implemented in my own work. And I learned to multiply the expected time to complete an experiment by pi to get the actual time it will take… and funny as that may be, it often really does work out that way!

I am truly grateful for the friends I made both while training in the Hubbell lab and beyond, and especially for Wayne, his wife Cherie, and Christian. Of course, everyone who has met Cherie knows how easy it was to become friends with her. She was an absolutely essential part of the Hubbell lab in so many different capacities; she was always so cheerfully dedicated to the success of the lab and such a wonderful ally and friend! Thank you, Wayne, for all of your exceptional training, collaboration, and support!”.

Candice Klug

“It has been a great honor to be a guest editor for this special issue celebrating the 80th birthday of my postdoctoral mentor, Prof. Wayne Hubbell. When I think of all the interactions I’ve had with Wayne in his lab and beyond, I find myself grateful and encouraged. Wayne has taught me the most valuable life asset, balance. In science, he tried to push the limits of our knowledge and techniques in EPR, but he was also a frontier of innovation, constantly making a new footprint in the field. His work was not limited within his own laboratory; through numerous collaborations, he made a significant contribution in biology built upon the EPR technique. He showed us how to stay curious but calm no matter what the outcome was. Above all, I learned to be someone who can balance being a passionate scientist and a great mentor. Wayne truly created a solid foundation for me and many other scientists. It is a great pleasure to celebrate his impressive achievements as a scientist and person through this special issue.

In presenting this issue, I find that I deeply miss Cherie Hubbell, who was our lab mother. She would have been very happy to see this issue. I am thankful to Wayne, who encouraged me that I could be a lab mother like her, even when I was at my low point. Here are some words from him that I always keep in mind: Each day is a gift and spend it wisely! Wayne, thank you so much for your contributions in science and being a great mentor.”

Miyeon Kim

This special issue includes an assortment of (i) research articles on spin labeling/spin tagging, new magnetic resonance methods, and discoveries in protein science based on SDSL EPR spectroscopy, (ii) reviews in several fields in which Wayne has been heavily invested or has made great contributions, such as high-pressure EPR, TAM spin labels, copper as a spin label in EPR applications, protein dynamics, and transmembrane proteins, (iii) a perspective on EPR data analysis (by Christian Altenbach, Wayne’s longtime colleague), and (iv) a personal narrative (by David Cafiso, Wayne’s former student and longtime friend and collaborator) that honors his contributions to science. The breadth of our representative (albeit not comprehensive) collection directly proves the broad impact Wayne has had on the fields of magnetic resonance, membranes, and protein science.

We are sincerely grateful to all authors who contributed to this special issue on relatively short notice. The corresponding author list comprises an array of Wayne’s graduate students (Cafiso), postdoctoral fellows (Altenbach, Farrens, Klug, Steinhoff, Yang), and collaborators and friends (Bode, Budil, Equbal, Fanucci, Feix, Freed, Gurevich, Saxena, Srivastava, Stoll, Thomas). We are also grateful to Dr. Laila Mosina and Prof. Dr. Kev Salikhov for their support in the preparation of this special issue, as well as to all referees for providing constructive feedback that significantly improved the submitted manuscripts. Moreover, we are honored to have received an outstanding submission from Wayne, which makes this 80th birthday issue extra special.

Happy birthday, Wayne!