AWA R DS
Recipients are HONORED FOR CONTRIBUTIONS of major significance to chemistry EDITED BY SOPHIE L. ROVNER
FOLLOWING IS THE FINAL set of vignettes
of recipients of awards administered by the American Chemical Society for 2012. A profile of Robert S. Langer, the 2012 Priestley Medalist, is scheduled to appear in the March 26 issue of C&EN along with his award address. Chi-Huey Wong, winner of the Arthur C. Cope Award, and most of the other national award winners will be honored at an awards ceremony that will be held on Tuesday, March 27, in conjunction with the spring ACS national meeting in San Diego. The Arthur C. Cope Scholar awardees will be honored at the fall ACS national meeting in Philadelphia, Aug. 19–23. The Arthur C. Cope Award recognizes and encourages excellence in organic chemistry; it consists of a medal, a cash prize of $25,000, and an unrestricted research grant of $150,000 to be assigned by the recipient to any university or nonprofit research institution. Each Cope Scholar Award consists of $5,000, a certificate, and an unrestricted research grant of $40,000 for any university or nonprofit research institution. Arthur C. Cope and Arthur C. Cope Scholar Awards are sponsored by the Arthur C. Cope Fund.
ARTHUR C. COPE AWARD “The most important figure in the development of carbohydrate synthesis using enzymatic catalysis and a major contributor to glycobiology”—that’s the way chemistry professor George M. Whitesides of Harvard University describes his former grad student and postdoc Chi-Huey Wong. Wong has earned the 2012 Arthur C. Cope Award for developing pioneering techniques for the chemical and enzymatic synthesis of carbohydrates and glycoproteins. These techniques have solved major problems and created new opportunities in carbohydrate chemistry and biology. Wong and coworkers have devised a va-
riety of innovative methods for the chemical and enzymatic synthesis of complex carbohydrates, glycoproteins, and related substances. And they have used directed evolution and genetic engineering to develop new enzymes and substrates for these syntheses. The strategies they have developed “elegantly fuse chemistry and biology into a novel, environmentally friendly approach for largescale synthesis and for the study of carbohydratemediated biological recognition reactions associated with cancer, bacterial and viral infections, and immuWong nological function,” according to chemistry professor Jeffery W. Kelly of Scripps Research Institute. The Wong group’s “groundbreaking research also laid the framework for much of the current interest in carbohydrate microarrays, posttranslational protein glycosylation, and carbohydrate-based drug discovery and vaccine design.” Wong and coworkers achieved the first synthesis of a glycoprotein and the first large-scale enzymatic synthesis of oligosaccharides. The researchers developed new aldol reactions and irreversible transesterifications that have been widely used in asymmetric synthesis. They developed a programmable approach to carbohydrate synthesis that provides a relatively fast, automated route to oligosaccharides for new cancer vaccines, carbohydrate microarrays, and other applications. And new probes they developed to identify posttranslational glycosylation modifications of proteins can be used to identify new glycoprotein markers associated with cancer and other diseases. “Chi-Huey’s contribution to carbohydrate synthesis is unmatched,” notes Ryoji Noyori, president of the Japanese
WWW.CEN-ONLIN E .ORG
58
FE BRUARY 27, 20 1 2
COURTESY OF CHI-HUEY WONG
2012 ACS NATIONAL AWARD WINNERS
research institution RIKEN. “His seminal accomplishments have totally changed the way carbohydrate research is carried out. Without him, the current level of this significant scientific field could not have been attained.” Wong, 63, received B.S. and M.S. degrees in chemistry and biochemistry at National Taiwan University. He earned a Ph.D. in organic chemistry in 1982 and worked as a postdoc, both in Whitesides’ group. He joined the faculty of Texas A&M University in 1983 and moved to Scripps in 1989. Since 2006, he has also served as president of Academia Sinica, in Taipei, Taiwan. Wong’s previous honors include a 1993 Cope Scholar Award from ACS, the 1999 Claude S. Hudson Award in Carbohydrate Chemistry from the ACS Division of Carbohydrate Chemistry, and the ACS Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry in 2005. He could well add some other major prizes to his collection in years to come. “I believe there will eventually be new Nobel Prizes in carbohydrate biochemistry,” Whitesides notes, “and Chi-Huey will certainly be a strong candidate for one.”—STU BORMAN
ARTHUR C. COPE SCHOLAR AWARDS Jeffrey Aubé, 53, had little exposure to
chemistry while growing up. His mother was a nurse, and his father, a pipe fitter. Aubé dreamed of becoming a musician. “I wasn’t interested in chemistry when I was young,” Aubé says. “I went to college completely unencumbered by any intention of going into science.” But at the University of Miami, Aubé excelled in his chemistry courses and began conducting research in the lab of Robert E. Gawley, then a chemistry professor at the university. “All of a sudden, I was experiencing organic chemistry in a completely different way than I had seen it in class,” Aubé says. “I fell in love with research.” Aubé earned a B.S. degree in chemistry from the University of Miami and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Duke University. He went on to complete a postdoc at Yale
department of medicinal chemistry at the University of Kansas. “All of these efforts are characterized by an unusual degree of creativity, attention to detail, rigor, and above all, individuality.”—LINDA WANG
Described by colleagues as fearless for his willingness to tackle intractable biochemical problems, Squire J. Booker is being honored with an Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award for his efforts to understand enzymes that catalyze “kinetically challenged” reactions. The enzymes that Booker studies typically use S-adenosyl-l-methionine (SAM), iron-sulfur clusters, or both to generate cellular oxidants under anaerobic conditions. The pathways arose during primordial times, when cells had to work without oxygen, Booker says. His studies require special experimental care, because much of the work must be doneanaerobically—including growing crystals for Xray crystallography. Booker’s work is “always highly original and rigorously designed and executed,” one colleague says. “I expect him to become one of the most highly regarded authorities on biological mechanisms.” An associate professor of chemistry and biochemBooker istry and molecular biology at Pennsylvania State University, Booker started his research program by studying lipoic acid synthase, an enzyme that had stymied other researchers, says his Penn State colleague J. Martin Bollinger Jr. The enzyme produces lipoic acid, a cofactor used by several other enzymes, by inserting sulfur atoms into octanoic acid through a mechanism involving a SAM-derived radical. Booker and coworkers found that the sulfur atoms are sourced from a sacrificed iron-sulfur cluster. More recently, Booker studied SAM-dependent methylation of RNA carbon atoms that are normally considered inert to such reactions. Both of the enzymes he studied methylate RNA in bacterial ribosomes; one group promotes normal ribosome func-
WWW.CEN-ONLIN E .ORG
59
FE BRUARY 27, 20 1 2
tion and the other promotes antibiotic resistance. Booker and colleagues found that the methylation mechanism involves a ping-pong reaction in which the enzymes first transfer a methyl group from SAM to a cysteine residue, then a second SAM generates a 5'-deoxyadenosyl radical that relocates the methyl from the cysteine to the adenosine base through a radical-addition mechanism. Booker has also studied a bacterial enzyme that uses iron-sulfur clusters to make quinolinic acid as part of the bacterial biosynthetic pathway for nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+), a common cellular cofactor. One of his findings is that the amount of oxygen available regulates one of the enzymes in the NAD+ synthetic pathway through a dithiol/disulfide redox switch: In the disulfide form, the enzyme activity is 10 times as much as when it’s in the dithiol form. That makes sense, Booker says, because bacteria require higher concentrations of NAD+ to grow in aerobic conditions. His group continues to tease out the details of the switch and the enzyme’s catalytic chemistry. Booker, 46, earned a B.A. degree with a concentration in chemistry from Austin College in 1987 and a Ph.D. in chemistry from Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994. Aside from Booker’s laboratory successes, he is lauded for his mentorship and ability to turn students into outstanding scientists. Booker’s combination of critical analysis and interpersonal skills also puts him in demand for service to Penn State as well as the broader chemistry community. Booker rarely refuses a request for his time, Bollinger says, “he is as unselfish and community-minded as he is scientifically gifted.”—JYLLIAN KEMSLEY PENN STATE U DEPARTMENT OF CHEMISTRY
U N IVERSIT Y O F K A N SAS
University. Aubé is the first person in his family to earn a college degree. Today, Aubé is a professor of medicinal chemistry at the University of Kansas. His research group is best known for its discovery of the intramolecular Schmidt reaction, in which an alkyl azide and a ketone react to form a lactam. In the classic Schmidt reaction, a six-membered ring such as cyclohexanone can be converted into a sevenAubé membered ring. “If you use our variation, you can attach the azide to the cyclohexanone so your product now has two rings associated with it, and it just so happens that those kinds of two-ring structures with a nitrogen at one of the ring fusions are present in a lot of different natural products,” Aubé says. The intramolecular Schmidt reaction “allows one to consider synthesis of otherwise untouchable targets, such as the prototypical twisted amide 2-quinuclidone,” says Brian M. Stoltz, professor of chemistry at California Institute of Technology. “In my own research, we were able to construct this long-standing target only through the use of the intramolecular Schmidt reaction.” Using the intramolecular Schmidt reaction, Aubé says, members of his group have made a number of alkaloids isolated from frog toxins. They’ve also made alkaloids from traditional Chinese medicine, such as the molecule stenine. Aubé’s group was able to reduce the number of steps in its previous synthesis of stenine by more than half. “What is most impressive about Jeff is that the field learns something it did not know every time he discloses one of his publications,” says Dale L. Boger, professor of chemistry at Scripps Research Institute. Aubé continues to develop new methodologies and uses those reactions to build chemical libraries. He screens those libraries and follows up on interesting biological leads for potential drugs. “Jeffrey Aubé has consistently built a record of excellence in the development of synthetic methods and their application to the syntheses of natural products, physical organic chemistry, and bioorganic chemistry,” says Barbara N. Timmermann, professor and chair of the
Timothy F. Jamison’s penchant for mak-
ing and mixing things can be traced back to his part-time job in high school at Swensen’s, an ice cream parlor where he made 100 or so gallons of the treat on a typical afternoon. At age 44, Jamison is still enamored with making and mixing things, but of a different kind. Inspirational high school teachers and a formative undergraduate research experience convinced him to trade
ACS AWANEWS R DS
AMANDA YARNELL
Cleaning glassware—it is a task most chemists would file under “drudgery.” But Anna K. Mapp sees it differently. While a premed student at Bryn Mawr College, the place where Arthur C. Cope got his start as a faculty member, Mapp’s sudsy work-study job eventually spurred a change of heart. As her college years progressed, she worked her way up from glassware washing to synthetic studies of Taxol. By the end of her senior year, Mapp realized she didn’t want to go to medical school anymore. “I knew I wanted to stay in research, because that was what I loved,” she says. Today, Mapp, 41, does what she loves at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Her lab specializes in understanding the chemistry Mapp behind gene regulation. Mapp’s route to chemical biology began at the University of California, Berkeley, where she delved into total synthesis for her doctorate with Clayton H. Heathcock. She then studied nucleic acid recognition as a National Institutes of Health postdoctoral fellow with Peter B. Dervan. She began her independent career at Michigan in
WWW.CEN-ONLIN E .ORG
60
FE BRUARY 27, 20 1 2
2000. The university “has a long tradition of supporting multidisciplinary research,” Mapp says. “It seemed like a great place to be able to evolve and grow.” In a few short years, Mapp was making the conference rounds, describing the artificial transcription factors her team could fashion from small molecules. It was at one such conference that her science captivated Jon Clardy of Harvard Medical School, an expert in the chemical biology of natural products. “I was blown away by the clarity of her ambition, of where she wanted to go,” Clardy says. Fast-forward to today, and “she’s pretty much done it, just the way she said she would,” he adds. “Anna exemplifies the best of what chemical biology can be.” “In my 40-year career at Berkeley, I had the good fortune to be associated with a host of excellent students,” says Heathcock, now an emeritus professor there. “The one that has given me the greatest pride is Anna Mapp.” Mapp“has done incisive and meaningful experiments while adroitly avoiding the morass that can plague work in biological systems,” adds chemical biologist Ronald T. Raines of the University of Wisconsin, Madison. “She is a star!” Award committees agree, having presented Mapp with a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists & Engineers, a Sloan Research Fellowship, and a National Science Foundation CAREER award, among other prizes. Beyond making artificial transcription factors, Mapp’s team tries to understand both the thermodynamics and kinetics that govern gene activation. She’d like to see her work translate into more therapeutics that target transcription. Controlling transcription factors that feature small-molecule binding pockets, such as the androgen receptor, is relatively straightforward today, Mapp says. “But most transcription factors aren’t regulated by small-molecule binding,” she says. “So you’re losing out on a lot of good targets.” When she isn’t fishing for transcriptional binding partners, Mapp likes to fish in the more traditional sense. Last summer, she taught her son to fly-fish, just as her father taught her.—CARMEN DRAHL ADAM J. MATZGER
ide-opening reactions. Two decades later, after many other chemists had tried and failed, Jamison’s team managed to model Nakanishi’s proposed chemistry. The key was carrying out the chemistry in water at neutral pH—just as nature does. Jamison’s team went on to demonstrate that its epoxide cascade chemistry can be used to make various natural products containing ladder polyether motifs. A native of northern California, Jamison got his undergraduate degree in chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley. A Fulbright fellowship then took him to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Zurich. He then completed his graduate degree in chemistry as well as a postdoc at Harvard University. He started his independent career in 1999 at MIT, where he has remained ever since.— M EGHAN M . JAM ISO N
ice cream for more challenging synthetic targets. Now, as a chemistry professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Jamison develops new synthetic methods and uses them to make natural products. “Tim Jamison has made numerous substantial contributions to the array of synthetic methods available to organic chemists,” says fellow MIT organic chemist Stephen L. Buchwald. The cornerstone of those contributions is nickel. The Jamison lab has devised nickel-catalyzed transformations for reductively coupling alkynes with aldehydes, for combining α-olefins with aldehydes, and for coupling alkynes and alkenes with epoxides. Jamison The last reaction goes against the normal dogma that both reactants need a multiple bond for the coupling reaction to proceed with low-valent metals, Buchwald says. To demonstrate the power of these nickel-catalyzed synthetic reactions, Jamison has used them to complete “a number of innovative and efficient total syntheses of interesting natural products,” Buchwald says. Among them is a route to terpestacin, a molecule isolated from a fungus that has been shown to inhibit angiogenesis and interfere with HIV infection mechanisms. Jamison’s team members used their nickel chemistry to stitch together the natural product’s 15-member macrocycle and to correct the structure of its purported diastereomer. His team later used nickel methods to diastereoselectively construct the 18-member macrocycle of amphidinolide T1, a marine natural product with antitumor properties. And they used their nickel-based strategies to build acutiphycin, a macrocycle of similar size and activity isolated from blue-green algae. More recently, Jamison “obtained the first real solution to the 20-year-old problem of modeling the chemistry proposed by Columbia University’s Koji Nakanishi for the biosynthesis of ladder polyether natural products,” Buchwald says. Ladder polyethers are behind the toxic algae blooms commonly known as red tides. Back in 1985, Nakanishi proposed that the algae made such ladder polyethers by way of a cascade of enzyme-catalyzed epox-
Over a career that spans five decades, David I. Schuster has tackled chemical challenges as varied as mechanistic organic photochemistry, the molecular basis of schizophrenia, the chemical reactivity of fullerenes, and most recently, solar energy conversion. Schuster, a New York City native, says his interest in chemistry began with his high school chemistry class in Far Rockaway. As an undergraduate at Columbia University, he frequently tutored his classmates and found that teaching came to him as naturally as chemistry did. Schuster went to California Institute of Technology for his graduate work, studying with John D. Roberts to Schuster
WWW.CEN-ONLIN E .ORG
61
FE BRUARY 27, 20 1 2
earn a Ph.D. in chemistry and physics. He then caught the organic photochemistry bug, and at the urging of Caltech chemistry professor George S. Hammond, he went to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, to do postdoctoral studies with Howard E. Zimmerman. Their work together is regarded as a landmark in the field. In the fall of 1961, Schuster joined the faculty at New York University, where he would spend his entire career, officially retiring at 70 in 2005 to devote himself to research as a professor emeritus. Schuster has worked in many areas of chemistry, but it’s his contributions to the fundamentalunderstandingofphotochemical and photophysical phenomena that are being recognized with this award. “Over his long and distinguished career, Schuster has made monumental contributions to the understanding of the reactions of electronically excited states of organic molecules,” says Caltech chemistry professor Harry B. Gray. “Indeed, he is among the pioneers of mechanistic organic photochemistry.” “It was a fun time,” Schuster says of his organic photochemistry work during the 1960s, ’70s, and early ’80s, “when we and others were discovering the rules of photochemistry. We were trying to understand how and why reactions occur and how one can change the course of photochemical reactions in organic systems.” More recently, Schuster has been creating nanoscale functionalized interlocked molecules, such as rotaxanes and catenanes. These systems feature peripheral electron donors, such as porphyrins, with C60 as the electron acceptor, for study of the dynamics of long-range photoinduced electron-transfer processes and energy storage. In addition to his research accolades, Schuster has an “unparalleled track record in teaching and mentoring scientists, especially undergraduates,” according to his former student Phil S. Baran, a chemistry professor at Scripps Research Institute. Schuster has mentored 53 Ph.D. students, at least 15 postdocs, and more than 150undergraduates—anexperience he has found “extremely gratifying.” He is, in fact, far more eager to talk about his students’ achievements than his own. Schuster has continued doing research since his retirement, publishes frequently, and gives invited COURTESY OF DAVID SCHUSTER
Meijer has “contributed enormously to the evolution of chemistry by exploring and developing the field of supramolecular chemistry and closing the gap between organic chemistry and materials science,” says Craig J. Hawker, a materials science and chemistry professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “There are few who can boast Meijer’s conceptual impact in the areas of dendrimers, conducting polymers, chiral assembly and recognition of polymers, self-assembly, and dynamic noncovalent macromolecules,” adds Massachusetts Institute of Technology chemistry professor Timothy M. Swager. “Bert is generally the first to make a discovery, authoritatively characterize the properties, and establish a new paradigm.” “The biggest hurdle that you have is to continuously go out of your comfort zone,” Meijer says of his success pushing the boundaries of science. “But that’s what keeps me excited.” In addition to his research and teaching, Meijer often speaks about science to the general public. He gives talks to schoolchildren and even gave a lecture at the Lowlands outdoor music festival in the Netherlands, speaking about why we cannot make life in the lab.—BETHANY HALFORD DSM R ESEARCH
Like all Dutch students, E. W. (Bert) Meijer had to decide upon a major before he could begin his university studies in the Netherlands. With his natural aptitude for science, Meijer could have easily chosen physics or biology. But he settled upon chemistry, he says, because it was rooted in physical laws but also required one’s imagination. Imagination, it turns out, has played an important part in Meijer’s career. For his “creative and visionary use of supramolecular interaction to create novel functional self-assembled architectures, which has introduced new materials and the concept of multistep noncovalent synthesis,” Meijer is being honored with this award. Meijer For the past 20 years, Meijer, who is 56, has been teaching and conducting research at Eindhoven University of Technology, in the Netherlands. He is currently Distinguished University Professor of Molecular Sciences, professor of organic chemistry, and director of the Institute for Complex Molecular Systems. But Meijer took a major detour before beginning his academic career. After completing his doctoral studies in traditional organic chemistry at the University of Groningen, in the Netherlands, Meijer spent a decade as an industrial researcher in his home country, working at Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven and at DSM Research in Geleen. “Due to that detour,” he says, “I came to the conclusion that I could really bring something additional to materials science if I used a purely organic chemistry approach.” Indeed, by bringing his organic chemistry skill set to materials science, Meijer has introduced a new class of dendrimers and has developed the concept of supramolecular electronics and supramolecular polymers. More recently, Meijer has been working in the area of complex molecular systems. The challenge in this new area of organic chemistry is to create multicomponent functional systems by combining covalent and noncovalent synthesis. “I think the strength of chemistry is making things,” Meijer says. “For centuries, it was making molecules. For the future, it will be synthesizing objects out of more than one molecule.”
AWA R DS
it is to expose young people to research experiences. Now a natural products chemist and an associate professor of chemistry at Columbia University, Snyder, 35, credits his parents with fostering his interests in math and science. Snyder’s mother is a high school calculus teacher, and his father is a biochemistry professor at the State University of New York, Buffalo. Snyder recalls that growing up, he spent many days experimenting in his father’s research lab. That preparation paid off. In high school, Snyder was selected to attend the U.S. National Chemistry Olympiad study camp. He says the experience allowed him to meet other high school students who were excited about chemistry. By the time Snyder began his undergraduate studies at Williams College in Williamstown, Mass., he had made up his mind to become a chemist. Snyder went on to earn a Ph.D. from Scripps Research Institute, where he worked under the guidance of K. C. Nicolaou on the chemistry and biology of the marinederived antitumor agent diazonamide A. He and Nicolaou also coauthored Snyder the textbook “Classics in Total Synthesis II,” which is one of the bestselling graduate titles in chemistry. Snyder then completed a postdoc at Harvard University in the lab of Nobel Laureate E. J. Corey, with whom he accomplished the enantioselective total synthesis of four members of the dolabellane family of natural products. At Columbia, Snyder is developing new strategies for the total synthesis of complex, stereochemically dense natural products derived from resveratrol, a molecule found in red wine that is believed to have a number of health benefits. His group has also developed a number of reagents
Influenced by his father’s work as a polymer chemist, Yi Tang developed an early interest in the chemical sciences. He began by studying chemical engineering, earning a bachelor’s degree at Pennsylvania State University in 1997. Later, as he pursued a Ph.D. in chemical engineering under David A. Tirrell at California Institute of Technology, Tang developed a passion for chemical biology. After reading about Chaitan Khosla’s work producing erythromycin in Escherichia coli
WWW.CEN-ONLIN E .ORG
62
FE BRUARY 27, 20 1 2
in 2001, Tang says, “I decided to pursue the field of natural product biosynthesis and went on to do a postdoc with him” at Stanford University. At 35, Tang, a professor in both the chemical and biomolecular engineering department and in the chemistry and biochemistry department at the University of California, Los Angeles, has already “elucidated fundamental aspects of the biosynthesis of natural products,” says Tirrell, professor of chemistry and chemical engineering at Caltech. Tang has made discoveries “that have provided new approaches to control of biosynthesis by reconstituting the enzyme clusters needed for in vitro biosynthesis of natural products and semisynthetic derivatives of active drugs,” Tirrell adds. Tang’s most important contribution involves fungal iterative polyketide synthases—enzymes that use a unique set of biochemical rules in the synthesis of complex polyketides, Tirrell says. Although these enzymes had previously been identified, Tang has made important contributions to their understanding.“He has developed a beautiful in vitro platform to dissect the function of a 300-kilodalton enzyme that catalyzes over 50 steps to synthesize the complex natural product lovastatin,” Tirrell explains.“That goal has been actively pursued for the last 15 years, but prior to Tang’s work, no one had been able to accomplish complete biochemical reconstitution.” Tang’s work on the lovastatin pathway also led to a chemoenzymatic process for the production of simvastatin, a semisynthetic derivative of lovastatin and the active ingredient in the multi-billion-dollar, cholesterol-lowering drug Zocor, Tirrell says. The process developed in Tang’s laboratory, which has been adopted by industrial biotech company Codexis, will significantly decrease the cost of making this drug. During his career, Tang has made a major impact on the study of assembly of biologically important natural products, especially polyketides and alkaloids, says John C. Vederas, a professor of chemistry at the University of Alberta. “He has great depth of understanding of biochemical reaction mechanisms, elegant original concepts for COU RT ESY O F Y I TAN G
Scott A. Snyder knows just how important
to prepare halogenated natural products. To date, the group has completed the total synthesis of more than 40 compounds. “Scott’s creativity and inventiveness, and his ability to look at total synthesis from a totally different perspective than that of the best-known organic chemists, represent his greatest strengths,” says Madeleine M. Joullié, a professor of chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. “He appears to have a unique talent to harvest all the known chemical knowledge and reduce it to its simplest and most elegant form, and he can visualize the most complicated molecules in terms of very simple concepts that Tang require few steps.” Snyder’s projects “have had deep impact on both synthetic design and methods development, evidenced not only by total citations but also by their routinely being among the most highly read papers in both JACS and Angewandte Chemie,” says Nicolaou, chair of the chemistry department at Scripps. “It is clear that Snyder has developed a truly unique synthesis style and is already a leader in his field.” In addition to his research, Snyder is helping to foster the next generation of scientists by providing opportunities for high school andundergraduatestudents to work in his lab. “Having had that chance to do research [when I was a young student] was a key factor in my decision to become a chemist,” he says. “I try to do the same for others each summer.”—LINDA WANG EILEEN BARROSO/COLUMBIA U
lectures, but he has scaled back his time at NYU to explore other passions. He is a talented pianist and also volunteers weekly at the New York Philharmonic Archives. He strongly believes that keeping busy keeps him young. “For 76, I’m doing quite well,” he says. “My memory is excellent, and I still have a full head of hair with only a tinge of gray.”—BETHANY HALFORD
SUSAN AINSWORTH
The sight of spacecraft piercing the sky inspired a generation. Some, like Michael R. Wasielewski, were not content to sit in idle wonder—they had to know how it was done. Wasielewski’s curiosity about the processes that drive rocket propulsion attracted him to the field of chemistry. After completing his Ph.D. in 1975 with Leon M. Stock at the University of Chicago,
Wasielewski did postdoctoral research with Ronald Breslow at Columbia University, where he became interested in the use of biomimetic methods to explore the chemistry of photosynthetic systems. Today, as the Clare Hamilton Hall Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University, Wasielewski leads a lab that is at the cutting edge of artificial-photosynthesis research. His group uses ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy, time-resolved electron paramagnetic resonancespectroscopy,and synchrotron-based X‑ray scattering, among other techniques, to characterize the behavior of photogenerated electrons in organic Wasielewski systems. Wasielewski is also director of the Department of Energy-sponsored Argonne-Northwestern Solar Energy Research Center (ANSER). He also holds an appointment at Argonne as a senior scientist at the Center for Nanoscale Materials.
WWW.CEN-ONLIN E .ORG
63
FE BRUARY 27, 20 1 2
His work using structural techniques to relate structure and function in organic donor-acceptor systems led to his nomination for this year’s award. Wasielewski “pioneered the strategy of using electron donor-acceptor molecules having well-defined molecular architectures to successfully mimic photosynthetic systems, leading to long-lived, efficient charge separation and storage,” Northwestern colleague Mark A. Ratner says. In addition to carrying out mechanistic studies of photosynthesis, Wasielew ski’s team is also developing new materials with potential applications in solar energy production. Early results suggest that the materials might exhibit “singlet fission.” In this process, the absorption of a photon produces two electron-hole pairs instead of the single pair normally produced. This enhancement could increase the maximum N AN CY J. WASIEL EWSK I
execution of very difficult experiments, and phenomenal insight into genetic manipulation and protein expression in both eukaryotes and prokaryotes.” Not surprisingly, Tang has already received many awards during his career, including the Society for Industrial Microbiology & Biotechnology Young Investigator Award, the American Institute of Chemical Engineers’ Allan P. Colburn Award, and a Sloan Research Fellowship. He is “very honored” to have been chosen to receive this award, he says. “It feels very special to be recognized by the organic chemistry community for my work in the burgeoning field of natural products biosynthesis.”—
AWA R DS
For young Jin-Quan Yu, his favorite chore was like a mystical quest. Every month, he’d trek to a store 2 miles from his home in a remote village in southeast China to collect free salt for his family. The vendor would
GABOR SOMORJAI AWARDED HONDA PRIZE Gabor A. Somorjai, professor of chemis-
try at the University of California, Berkeley, is the winner of the 2011 Honda Prize for his pioneering contributions to surface chemistry. The Honda Prize, awarded by the Honda Foundation, is Japan’s first international science and technology award. The Honda Foundation was created by Honda Motor’s founder Soichiro Honda and his younger brother Benjiro Honda.
give Yu empty linen bags that once contained kilograms of salt. He’d take the bags home, wet them, and evaporate the water to collect the salt crystals that emerged, as if by magic. Yu says he wasn’t thinking about chemistry then, but he’s pretty sure the experience was the first indication that he had “good lab hands.” Yu, 46, has since put his hands to use in C–H activation, arguably the hottest area of organometallic chemistry. He is “a phenom,” says University of California, Berkeley, organometallic chemist John F. Hartwig. “This guy is on fire and full of ideas.” A desire to study medicine led Yu to earn a bachelor’s degree in chemistry at Shanghai’s East China Normal University. “In the Yu village it could get really scary if you were ill,” Yu recalls. “We pretty much relied on Chinese herb extracts.” Yu earned his master’s under Shu-De Xiao at the Guangzhou Institute of Chemistry. There, Yu’s research led to a catalyst for ton-scale production of dihydromyrcenol, a lily-of-the-valley-scented compound used in shampoos and perfumes. Fascinated by enzyme catalysis, Yu attended the University of Cambridge to earn a Ph.D. with Jonathan B. Spencer. He then joined E. J. Corey’s Harvard University lab as a postdoc, hoping to do total synthesis. But Corey steered Yu toward another project—allylic C–H oxidation. Yu was reluctant at first, but became enthralled with the challenge of converting normally inert C–H bonds to C–C or C-heteroatom bonds. After Harvard, Yu began independent
research back at Cambridge as a Royal Society Research Fellow. In 2004, he became an assistant professor at Brandeis University. In 2007, he moved to Scripps Research Institute, where he is currently a full professor. He’s garnered many honors, including a Sloan Research Fellowship, the Japanese Society of Synthetic Organic Chemistry’s Mukaiyama Award, and numerous awards from pharmaceutical companies. “I consider Jin-Quan’s pivotal contributions to the C–H activation field to be some of the very best in the area,” says Yu’s Scripps colleague and chemistry chairman K. C. Nicolaou. “Many groups have been focusing on sp2 C–H bond functionalization, but Dr. Yu recognized that the chemistry of sp3 C–H bond functionalization is potentially much richer,” says Huw M. L. Davies, who studies C–H activation at Emory University. In 2008, for example, Yu discovered the first palladium(II)-catalyzed coupling of sp3 C–H bonds with sp3 organoboron reagents. Yu’s team also developed the first palladium-catalyzed enantioselective C–H activation reactions. Yu says the key is using ligands that weakly coordinate to palladium. “By the time I retire, I hope synthetic chemists, particularly those in the pharmaceutical industry, will use C–H activation on a daily basis, like they do cross-coupling,” Yu says. In his spare time, Yu likes to play soccer. His favorite position? “Right wing,” Yu says. “I want to strike and score.”—
Somorjai’s discoveries in surface chemistry and catalysis have led to a better understanding of friction, lubrication, adhesion, and adsorption. Somorjai’s peers refer to him as the “father of modern surface chemistry.” He received a medal, a certificate, and 10 million yen (approximately $129,000) during an award ceremony in Tokyo in November 2011. Somorjai
CAROLYN BERTOZZI TO DELIVER CHEMICAL BIOLOGY LECTURE
WWW.CEN-ONLIN E .ORG
64
FE BRUARY 27, 20 1 2
JAN ET HIGHTOWER /SCR IP PS
theoretical efficiency of solar cells made from the materials by as much as 30%. Wasielewski’s lab is also investigating quantum effects in organic materials with an eye toward quantum computing. His group is exploring a phenomenon known as “spin teleportation,” wherein the quantum state of a molecule at one location can be replicated at another location. With his organic materials, he says, his team is close to accomplishing this feat with light and to read the teleported states using microwave pulse sequences. The use of organic materials offers the potential to “deploy the arsenal of organic chemistry, including the tools of selfassembly,” to make materials for massively parallel computational systems, he says. Wasielewski was elected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1995. His recent honors include the 2004 Inter-American Photochemical Society Award in Photochemistry, the 2006 James Flack Norris Award in Physical Organic Chemistry from ACS, and the 2008 Porter Medal. When asked to sum up his work, Wasielewski says, “The magic word is multidisciplinary.” His research demands expertise in organic, physical, inorganic, and materials chemistry, as well as instrumentation. Jovan Giaimuccio, a former group member now at Independent Project Analysis, says, “The opportunity to be exposed to so many advanced forms of scientific experimentation gives Mike’s students the ability to discern scientific discovery from experimental artifact.”—CRAIG BETTENHAUSEN
CARMEN DRAHL
Carolyn R. Bertozzi, the T. Z. & Irmgard
Chu Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and professor of molecular and cell biology at the University of California, Berkeley, has been awarded the 2012 ACS Chemical Biology Lectureship in recognition of her pioneering contributions to research at the interface of chemistry and biology. Bertozzi’s research focuses on profiling changes in cell-surface glycosylation as-
