The 2015 Stein and Moore Award recipient is Dr. William DeGrado (University of California, San Francisco). Dr. DeGrado’s bold body of work spanning decades has taught us that proteins can be rationally designed in a staged modular manner based on simple chemical and conformational principles, and that both de novo and biologically-inspired functional elements can also be installed. His work has also taught us the pitfalls in rational design, and has provided a battery of biophysical and biochemical methods that can be powerfully applied to validate and understand the structure of these designs. His pioneering work has shown that simple chemical principles can be rationally applied to highly complex systems to both understand them and create new materials and potential therapeutics. His impact on the field of protein science can hardly be overestimated.