Stephen (Steve) R. Heller

Guest Researcher at NIH/NLM/NCBI/PubChem

About

I received my BS in Chemistry from SUNY-Stony Brook and my PhD in Chemistry from Georgetown University.

In 2024 I established the Stephen Heller Chemistry Chair for Cheminformatics at Stony Brook.

Current Work

I am a guest researcher at NIH/NLM/NCBI/PubChem working on the IUPAC InChI chemical identification project and Project Director for the not-for-profit InChI Trust.

The objective of the IUPAC Chemical Identifier Project is to establish a unique label, the IUPAC International Chemical Identifier (InChI), which is a non-proprietary identifier for chemical substances that could be used in printed and electronic data sources thus enabling easier linking of diverse data compilations. It was officially released in April 2005 and it has been incorporated into more public and private databases than any other structure representation.

InChI Videos

Career

  • 2000 - Present: Advisory Board member of the NIH PubChem project
  • 2000 - 2006: Consultant and contributing editor for Chemindustry.com
  • 2000 - 2002: Strategic planner for MDL Information Systems
  • 1967 - 2000: US Government agencies as chemist involved in chemical information and computer-based databases

Editorial Work

I was a member of the editorial board of the all-electronic Internet Journal of Chemistry from 1997-2004 and Software Review Editor for the Journal of Chemical Information and Computer Sciences (JCICS), now the Journal of Chemical Information and Modeling (JCIM), from 1987 - 2015. I am a member of the J. Cheminformatics Editorial Board from 2015. I have published over 160 papers in peer reviewed journals.

Achievements

I am the founder/creator/originator of the NIH/EPA/NIST Mass Spec database, the NIH/EPA CIS (Chemical Information System), the SciWords series of scientific spell checkers, the International Plant & Animal Genome conferences, and the IUPAC InChI project.

Awards and Honors

  • EPA Gold Medal for the design and implementation of the Chemical Information System (CIS) - 1976
  • ACS CINF Division Skolnik Award (co-recipient) - 2000
  • CSA Trust Mike Lynch Award (InChI team) - 2014
  • ACS Patterson-Crane Award for work on IUPAC InChI - 2015
  • IUPAC Fellow - 2016
  • ACS Fellow - 2020

Conferences

I am the chairman of the International Plant & Animal Genome (PAG) conference from 1992 and the PAG Asia meeting from 2014.

Hobbies

My hobbies include tennis, flying (my current co-pilot is Nate), and sushi.

Last updated June 2025