Short Bio for Stephen (Steve) R. Heller...


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


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. Four short (3 minute) Videos about InChI can be found on YouTube at:

1. What on Earth is InChI?

2. The Birth of the InChI

3. The Googlable InChIKey

4. InChI and the Islands

My full resume can be found at here and my talks can be found at here.

I am an Advisory Board member of the NIH PubChem project from 2004.

From 2000 - 2006 I was a consultant to and a contributing editor of specialzed databases for Chemindustry.com.

From 2000 - 2002 I was a strategic planner for MDL Information Systems.

From 1967 - 2000 I worked in a number of US Government agencies as chemist involved primarily in chemical information and computer based databases and related search systems.

I received my BS in Chemistry ('63) from SUNY-Stony Brook and my PhD in Chemistry ('67) from Georgetown University .

I was member of the editorial board of the all electronic journal: the 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 - date. I have published over 160 papers in peer reviewed journals.

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 (mentioned above).

My major awards and honors include the EPA Gold Medal for the design and implmentation of the Chemcial Information System (CIS) in 1976; co-receipient of the ACS CINF Divison Skolnik Award in 2000; a member of the InChI team that was given the CSA Trust Mike Lynch Award in 2014; the receiptient of the ACS Patterson-Crane award for work on the development of the IUPAC International Chemical Identifier (InChI) in 2015; an IUPAC Fellow (2016), and an ACS Fellow (2020).

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

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

This was last updated 25 November, 2021