Spring 2016 New & Noteworthy

 

Professor Emeritus Jack Kirsch received a Dickson Emeriti Professorship. Since his formal retirement in 2006, he has continued to research and teach, and has developed a freshman seminar that treats students to local performances in the arts.
Read about Jack Kirsch...

 

 

Professor Eva Nogales was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and she and a group of collaborative researchers recently received substantial HHMI funding for two new cryo-EM facilities at Berkeley and UCSF, which will be available to investigators at UC Berkeley, UC Davis, UC Santa Cruz, UCSF and LBNL.
Read more...

 

 

Assistant Professor Hillel Adesnik received a Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering (PECASE) and an American Association of Anatomists (AAA) Young Investigators Award.

 

 

Assistant Professor Stephan Lammel has been awarded a 2016 Whitehall Foundation Fellowship, which supports young scientists at the beginning of their careers and assists scholarly research in vertebrate and invertebrate neurobiology.

 

 

Professor Michelle Chang received the Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry in recognition of her contributions to the understanding of enzymatic incorporation of fluorine into natural products.

 

 

Professor Jennifer Doudna joined Joseph Biden at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland in January 2016 to speed the discovery of cures for cancer, which President Obama has dubbed a “cancer moonshot.” She was named an Allen Distinguished Investigator, received Canada’s Gairdner Award, the Paul Ehrlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize, the Warren Alpert Prize, the Biopolymers Murray Goodman Memorial Prize from the American Chemical Society, and the Human Frontier Science Program Nakasone Award. She was elected as a foreign member of UK’s Royal Society. Read more about the Cancer Moonshot.

 

 

Professor Susan Marqusee and Professor Emeritus Robert Glaeser were elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Glaeser was also elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

 

 

Director of QB3 and Professor of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Structural Biology Susan Marqusee and Associate Professor of Biochemistry, Biophysics and Structural Biology Ahmet Yildiz — as well as MCB affiliate, Associate Professor of Plant and Microbial Biology, Arash Komeili — have received Miller Professorships for 2016-2017. These prestigious awards are “dedicated to the encouragement of creative thought and the conduct of research and investigation in the field of pure science.”

 

 

Assistant Professor Xavier Darzacq was a recipient of a California Institute of Regenerative Medicine (CIRM) Award. He is also leading the Berkeley component of a large, collaborative initiative to better understand gene regulation. Darzacq and his collaborators received a five-year grant from the NIH.

 

 

Assistant Professor Hernan Garcia received a 2016 Sloan Fellowship to study chemical signals that orchestrate the development of a single cell into a multicellular organism, and was named a 2016 Searle Scholar.

 

 

Assistant Professor Gloria Brar has received a 2016 Sloan Fellowship for her work studying the genes that regulate meiosis.

 

 

Professor Jeffery Cox has received a 2015 NIH Director’s Pioneer Award for his project “Host-Directed Strategies to Create Synergistic Antibacterial Therapies.”

 

 

Assistant Professor Evan Miller is a 2016 recipient of the Basil O’Connor Starter Scholar Research Award from the March of Dimes, a New Investigator Research Grant from the Alzheimer’s Association, and a 2016 Sloan Fellowship.

 

 

Professor Jasper Rine was elected to the National Academy of Inventors for his contributions in the field of gene regulation.

 

 

Assistant Professor Roberto Zoncu has been named one of seven winners of the 2016 Damon Runyon-Rachleff Innovation Award for early-career scientists doing novel research into cancer.