News items about Faculty Members
Finding NEMO: Multidisciplinary Team Searches for the Drugs of the Future
There are many medically important drug targets that current drug discovery technology is not able to address. Collaborative basic research in Chemistry, Biology, and Biochemistry is key to solving these intractable problems to enable the discovery of new classes of drugs. A multidisciplinary team at Boston University, led by Associate Professor of Chemistry Adrian Whitty, […]
Chemistry Faculty Receive BU Ignition Awards to Develop Promising Cancer & Tuberculosis Drugs
The Ignition Award Program provides funds to evolve BU research to the stage where it can be licensed, form the basis of a new company, or be used to create a new, non-profit social enterprise. In June 2010, two Chemistry faculty, John Porco and John Snyder, received these highly competitive awards for their respective commercially […]
Tom Tullius and His Research Profiled in The Scientist
The work of Professor Tom Tullius and his collaborators, including former student, Dr. Steven Parker, now a scientist at the NIH, has revealed that DNA shape is even more conserved than its sequence, leading to the ground breaking conclusion that the shape of a DNA segment is important for its function. Written by Karen Hopkin, […]
Elliott Receives Inaugural Scialog Award
Professor Sean Elliott has received one of the eleven inaugural Scialog Awards sponsored by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement. This multi-year program is designed to accelerate the work of 21st-century science by funding early career scientists (either individuals or multi-disciplinary teams) to pursue transformative research, in dialog with their fellow grantees, on crucial issues […]
Straub named Associate Editor of JCP
The Journal of Chemical Physics (JCP) reports significant research in methods and applications of chemical physics both in traditional areas (spectroscopy, kinetics, statistical mechanics, and quantum mechanics) and in newer areas (polymers, materials, surfaces/interfaces, information theory, and systems of biological relevance are of increasing importance). The journal is published by the American Institute of Physics. […]
Chemistry Faculty Receive Boston University’s Top Teaching and Advising Awards
Boston University has again recognized Chemistry’s distinction in teaching and advising by conferring a 2010 Metcalf Award for Excellence in Teaching on Professor John Caradonna and the 2009/2010 Templeton Prize for Excellence in Student Advising on Dr. Binyomin Abrams. Student’s have found John Caradonna’s teaching to be the most remarkable and enriching academic experience of […]
Björn Reinhard Receives NSF CAREER Award
The National Science Foundation Faculty Early CAREER awards are presented to teacher-scholars who are “most likely to become the academic leaders of the 21st century.” The Department is proud to announce that this year, Professor Björn Reinhard has received this important award for his proposed research on “Frequency Domain Plasmon Fluctuation Spectroscopy For Single Biopolymer […]
Adrian Whitty and group receive NIH Award to perform quantitative analysis of RET Receptor activation and signaling
The Whitty Group has received a 5-year, $2 million award from the NIH. Growth factors (GFs) are messenger proteins that mediate the signals between cells that regulate critical functions such as cell growth, maturation, and death. In comparison with other medicinally important protein classes (enzymes, ion channels and G protein-coupled receptors) little is known about […]
NIH funds Pinghua Liu and his group to perform mechanistic studies of enzymes in isoprenoid biosynthesis
The goal of this award ($1.9 million over 5 years – 2010-2015) is to characterize the mechanism of a key enzyme in the deoyxylulose biosynthetic pathway as well as identify its key partner proteins. This pathway, identified only in bacteria and plants, produces the required compounds for isoprenoid synthesis. The results of this work could […]
Karen Allen Leads the Bridge Project: Functional Assignment in HAD Superfamily Phsphotransferases
Professor Karen Allen is leading the HAD Bridge Project of the NIH U54 award to the University of Illinois entitled “Collaborative Center for an Enzyme Function Initiative,” ($25 million over 4 years, John Gerlt, PI). Known as “GLUE Grants,” these prestigious awards provide resources to currently funded scientists to form research teams to tackle complex […]