On November 3rd, 2009 we tragically lost Warren Lyford DeLano. This was the result of a sudden and tragic onset of anxiety. For the last 7 years Warren DeLano had been a loving husband, brother and son. He wrote an open source software program called Pymol that dramatically improved how computational scientist were able to do their research. He started DeLano Scientific to focus his time and energy on this product. Before that, he was a founding scientist at Sunesis Pharmaceuticals.

He came into this world June 21st, 1972 in Philadelphia, PA. By the time he was four his family had moved to Palo Alto, California where he attended high school at Henry M. Gunn. There he was involved in the Theater program and managed all productions that were put on during his senior year. From there he moved on to Yale where he joined Axel Brunger’s lab, a powerhouse of Structural Biology research. Axel helped Warren develop and hone his two passions, science and computers. After only three years Warren got his degrees in both Computer Science and Molecular Biophysics & Biochemistry, yet he stayed on for another year working in Axel’s lab. His time at Yale was significant for his personal life as well, as he met his wife Beth Pehrson there.

He returned to California to pursue a PhD at University of California, San Francisco. There he was able to join Jim Well’s lab, later following him to a start-up, Sunesis Pharmaceuticals.

Throughout all of Warren’s life, he kept himself focused on his passions. Often he would be program ming late into the night, answering email questions from Pymol users or solving structure problems. On the few occasions he wasn’t programming or helping science progress, he took time to hike in the mountains with his wife or do projects around their Palo Alto home. He had spent some time learning to fly, even having done a few solo flights.

He will be missed by countless and is survived by his wife Beth Pehrson, mother Margaret DeLano of Loma Mar, father James DeLano, Jr. of Sausalito, step-mother Cathy Groves DeLano, step-father Tom Snouse of Felton, sister Jennifer DeLano of Oakley and brother Brendan DeLano of Greenbrae, as well as five aunts and eight cousins.

Thank you for visiting this site. The family has so very much enjoyed the memories that have been posted. Thank you. Please continue to post them.