Awards

Call For Nominations For MEDI Predoctoral Fellowships

The ACS Division of Medicinal Chemistry will continue its Predoctoral Fellowship program into 2005–06 by awarding five $20,000 fellowships. The awards are designed for predoctoral students in their third or fourth year of graduate study engaged in medicinal chemistry research in a medicinal chemistry, pharmaceutical chemistry, biochemistry, or chemistry department listed in the ACS Directory of Graduate Research. Applicants should be in their second or third year of graduate study at the time of application.

Nominations should be submitted by an applicant's Ph.D. adviser and must include a comprehensive curriculum vitae of the student, including education and work experience; a student bibliography, including reprints of articles; a complete project description, including rationale, prepared by the candidate (limited to five pages in length); transcripts of all post-high-school work, including GRE scores; three letters, including a nomination letter from the student's research adviser; and a letter from a university official with a commitment to cover tuition and all fees granted to other regular graduate students. Applicants must be U.S. citizens or permanent-resident visa holders at the time of application and must have at least one year of graduate school remaining after Sept. 1, the time the fellowships are slated to begin.

Additional information (including a complete set of guidelines) can be obtained from Kenneth A. Jacobson, Chief, Molecular Recognition Section, Laboratory of Bioorganic Chemistry, NIDDK, NIH, Bldg. 8A, Rm. B1A-19, 10 Center Dr., Bethesda, MD 20892-0810; (301) 496-9024, fax (301) 480-8422; e-mail: kajacobs@helix.nih.gov. Eight copies of all application materials are due to Jacobson at the above address by Feb. 15.

Nakai Garners Award For Food Chemistry Research

Shuryo Nakai, a professor emeritus in the University of British Columbia's department of food science, received the 2004 Award for Advancement of Application of Agricultural & Food Chemistry at the ACS national meeting in Philadelphia. Sponsored by International Flavors & Fragrances and administered by the ACS Division of Agricultural & Food Chemistry, the award consists of a plaque, meeting travel expenses, and $3,000.

Nakai was cited for his research on the structure/function relationship in food protein, including insights into hydrophobic interactions in protein functionality and the use of computer-aided optimization for quantitative protein structure-function evaluation. Nakai has authored more than 250 papers and was recognized as one of the 100 most-cited researchers in agricultural sciences in 2002.

Valentine Awarded John C. Bailar Jr. Medal

Joan S. Valentine, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the University of California, Los Angeles, is the recipient of the 2004–05 John C. Bailar Jr. Medal. The award is given annually to recognize outstanding inorganic chemistry research.

Valentine was chosen for her work on coordination chemistry, including contributions to the biomimetic modeling of heme enzymes and to biochemical and biophysical studies of copper-zinc superoxide dismutases and their link to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS, commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease).

Valentine received a bachelor's degree in chemistry in 1967 from Smith College, Northampton, Mass., and a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from Princeton University in 1971. After a year as an instructor at Princeton, she became an assistant professor of chemistry at Rutgers University. She moved to UCLA in 1980.

Special Recognition

Christine S. Grant, an associate professor of chemical engineering at North Carolina State University, is one of the first three recipients of the National Academy of Engineering's Boeing Co. Engineering Education Senior Fellowships. The awards consist of a 12-month appointment starting Jan. 1 to produce analyses for NAE's Center for the Advancement of Scholarship on Engineering Education. Grant will develop an institute that focuses on advancing the professional success of current and future faculty members from populations that are underrepresented in engineering. The other two recipients are Gary L. Downey, a professor of science and technology in society at Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University, Blacksburg, and Juan C. Lucena, an associate professor of liberal arts and international studies at the Colorado School of Mines, Golden, whose joint project will document international diversity in the roles of engineers and views of engineering and will develop assessments of students' learning outcomes in courses on practicing in an international context.

Three chemists have been recognized in the Solvias Ligand Contest for submitting new and improved applications of Solvias ligands. Ben L. Feringa, Jacobus H. van't Hoff Professor for Molecular Sciences at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, was recognized for "Copper-catalyzed asymmetric conjugate addition of Grignard reagents to cyclic and acyclic enones"; John F. Hartwig, a professor of organic chemistry at Yale University, for "Highly-reactive, long-lived, and general catalysts for the palladium-catalyzed reactions of heteroaryl and aryl chlorides with primary nitrogen nucleophiles"; and Yi Hsiao, a senior scientist at Merck's Process Research Laboratories, for "Highly efficient synthesis of ß-amino acid derivatives via asymmetric hydrogenation of unprotected enamines."