Of Note

Jin-Quan Yu Wins ACS Elias J. Corey Award

Professor Jin-Quan Yu, who holds the Frank and Bertha Hupp Professorship of Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI), was selected to receive the American Chemical Society (ACS) Elias J. Corey Award for Outstanding Original Contribution in Organic Synthesis by a Young Investigator. Named after the 1990 Nobel laureate, the award recognizes an individual with less than 15 years’ experience since his/her terminal degree, who has accomplished creative research of exceptional merit and value in synthetic organic chemistry. The award is supported by the Pfizer Endowment Fund.

Yu will be profiled in a future issue of Chemical & Engineering News and will be honored at a ceremony during the 249^th ACS National Meeting in Denver next March.

John Yates III Receives ACS Award in Analytical Chemistry

Professor John Yates III has won the ACS Award in Analytical Chemistry, recognizing outstanding contributions to the field. The award has been sponsored by The Batelle Memorial Institute since 2004.

Yates will be featured with other ACS award winners in Chemical & Engineering News and will be honored at a ceremony during the 249^th ACS National Meeting in Denver next March.

Denis Malyshev and Floyd Romesberg Win Nobel Laureate Signature Award

Recent TSRI graduate Denis Malyshev (class of ’14) and Associate Professor Floyd Romesberg have been selected to receive the 2015 Nobel Laureate Signature Award for Graduate Education in Chemistry, recognizing an outstanding graduate student and his or her mentor.

With this year’s other ACS award winners, Malyshev and Romesberg will be profiled in Chemical & Engineering News and honored at a ceremony during the 249^th ACS National Meeting in Denver next March. Previous winners of the Nobel Laureate Signature Award include TSRI Professor Phil S. Baran (TSRI class of ’01) and his mentor K.C. Nicolaou, now at Rice University.

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Associate Professor Floyd Romesberg (left) and recent graduate Denis Malyshev were selected for a Nobel Laureate Signature Award for Graduate Education in Chemistry. (Photos by Cindy Brauer.)

Peter Schultz Named Top Translational Researcher

Peter Schultz, Scripps Family Chair Professor and member of the Skaggs Institute for Chemical Biology at TSRI, was ranked the top translational researcher in 2013, according to a study in the August 2014 issue of Nature Biotechnology.

The ranking, by Brady Huggett, business editor at Nature Biotechnology, and Kathryn Paisner, director of research and analytics at IP Checkups Inc., is based on total patents awarded to faculty members at their current affiliations who were among corresponding authors on 200 papers highlighted in 2013 in the publication SciBX.

Schultz tops the study’s list of 20 scientists with 93 U.S. and European patents. Schultz’s translational research activities at TSRI are centered on regenerative medicine, cancer, autoimmune and orphan/neglected diseases, previously in collaboration with the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation and more recently with the California Institute for Biomedical Research, where he serves as director.

Travis Hughes Wins NIH Pathway to Independence Award

Travis Hughes, research associate in the Kojetin lab, has won a Pathway to Independence Award from the National Institutes of Health’s (NIH) National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases. The awards are intended to shorten the time researchers spend as postdoctoral fellows, facilitating the transition to independent NIH Research Grant Program (R01) funding.

Hughes’s project is titled “Connecting the functional effects of drugs to how they change PPAR gamma.” His research focuses on defining how current anti-diabetes drugs cause changes to protein structure and internal movements. Improved understanding of these changes will enable development of effective anti-diabetic drugs that reduce undesirable side effects.

Stephanie Sillivan Receives Early-Career Award

Stephanie Sillivan, research associate in the Miller lab, has received a Young Investigator Award from the Brain & Behavior Research Foundation (formerly NARSAD), a nonprofit organization that promotes scientific research targeted at understanding the causes of, and improving treatments for, mental illness.

The two-year NARSAD grant supports promising young scientists conducting neurobiological research, enabling early-career researchers to garner pilot data for innovative ideas prior to achieving proof-of-concept for their work.

Sillivan’s research is directed at understanding the mechanisms that support long-term memories, in particular traumatic or pathogenic memories that persevere over an extended period of time. This work has broad implications for neuropsychiatric disorders with a memory component, such as post-traumatic stress disorder, Alzheimer’s disease and substance use disorder.

Send comments to: mikaono[at]scripps.edu

Professor Jin-Quan Yu has won the ACS Elias J. Corey Award for Outstanding Original Contribution in Organic Synthesis by a Young Investigator.

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Professor John Yates III is this year’s winner of the ACS Award in Analytical Chemistry.

New Students Arrive at TSRI
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Arriving from countries as far-flung as China, Turkey and Portugal and states across the U.S., 62 new TSRI graduate students—49 on the California campus and 13 in Florida—began classes this month. (Photo by Cindy Brauer.)

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