Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award: Thomas Kodadek

Citation: For exemplary work in elucidating and manipulating important biological pathways using novel chemical and biochemical tools.

Current position: professor of chemistry and cancer biology, Scripps Research ­Institute, Florida

Education: B.S., chemistry, University of Miami; Ph.D., organic chemistry, Stanford University

Kodadek on what he hopes to accomplish in the next decade: “I’ve learned how long it takes to accomplish something really important, so 10 years no longer seems like such a long time. Nonetheless, I hope that we will have a new type of high-throughput screening system that would routinely provide high-affinity and -selectivity synthetic ligands to almost any biomolecule that one wished to target. Then use this system to discover antibody biomarkers that would enable the early diagnosis of many different diseases.”

What his colleagues say:“Tom Kodadek has been a leading figure in the field of chemical biology for more than two decades, and he continues to push the frontiers of this field in exciting new directions through innovative technology development and a firm commitment to rigorous mechanistic understanding of complex biological processes.”—Benjamin Cravatt, Scripps Research Institute, California