Division Newsletters

The Division of Biological Chemistry publishes its newsletter on a semiannual schedule. Hear the latest news from our Chair, and read about upcoming meetings and symposia, award nominations, officer elections, and travel grants.

Winter 2010 Newsletter

2009 passed very quickly and, although later than usual, I wanted to report on last year’s activities and events of note for the Division of Biological Chemistry.

Award Winners

The Division of Biological Chemistry recently announced the winners of the Division and ACS publications sponsored awards. Perry Frey (Wisconsin) was announced as the winner of Biochemistry’s Gordon Hammes award and lectureship. Alanna Shepartz (Yale) was announced as the first winner of ACS Chemical Biology’s lectureship and will present her talk at the spring meeting in San Francisco in March. Vahe Bandarian (Arizona) was announced as the winner of the Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry. Alice Ting (MIT) was announced as the winner of the Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry. Ron Raines (Wisconsin) was announced as the winner of the Repligen Award in the Chemistry of Biological Processes. The Lilly, Pfizer and Repligen award lectures and symposia will take place at the fall meeting. Finally, Division member Steve Benkovic (Penn State) was awarded the ACS National Ralph Hirschmann Award in Peptide Chemistry. He has elected to present his work within the spring program of the Division of Biological Chemistry.

Nomination packages for the 2011 Lilly, Pfizer and Repligen awards must include a nomination letter, candidate’s curriculum vitae and up to four letters of support. All of these must be assembled into a single .pdf file and emailed to Nigel Richards no later than June 1, 2010.

Spring Meeting

The Program Chair in 2009, Suzanne Walker (Harvard) has put together a fabulous program for the March 2010 meeting in San Francisco. In addition to the Hirschmann and ACS Chemical Biology lectureships, four theme-based sessions have been organized by Tom Muir (Rockefeller), Wilfred van der Donk (Illinois). Kevan Shokat (UCSF) and Carolyn Bertozzi (Berkeley), who will be the final speakers in each session. Finally, in a continuing collaboration between the Divisions of Biological Chemistry and Medicinal Chemistry, a symposium on New Drug Targets will be presented. I want to take this opportunity to thank Suzanne for her enormous efforts in organizing the fall 2009 and spring 2010 national meeting programs, which were, and certainly will be, exciting and extremely well attended.

Meeting Support

In addition to supporting our Division’s programming at the fall and spring ACS National meetings, the Division supports a number of International, National and Local and regional meetings via contributions. Last year over $12,000 was allocated for this purpose, including significant support for the Enzymes and Bioorganic Gordon Conferences. Financial support will also be provided to the Trends in Enzymology meeting, which will be held in Switzerland this summer. The Texas Enzyme Conference meeting received support, as did the Isotopes Gordon Conference. In addition, the Division administered the Founders and Knowles Awards at the Winter Enzyme Mechanisms and Bioorganic Gordon Conferences, respectively. Finally, the Division increased its support of student and postdoctoral travel awards to Divisional meetings.

Division Elections

For a second year, the Divisional elections were web-based although with a new company providing the web site resource. Nigel Richards (Florida) was elected as the new Secretary and began his tenure on January 1, 2010. Tom Wandless (Stanford) was elected to the Program Committee joining Marty Bollinger (2010-2011 Program Chair), Suzanne Walker and Dewey McCafferty. Deborah Hung (Harvard) was elected to serve on the Nominating Committee, and Shana Kelly (Toronto) and Nicola Pohl (Iowa State) will serve on the Executive Committee. Finally, I want to thank our outgoing Secretary, Martha Oakley, who performed a magnificent job under extremely trying circumstances. I look forward to seeing all the Division officers in San Francisco next March.

Divisional Finances

Thanks in large part to the former Treasurer, Eugene Mueller, the Division’s finances remain in great shape. Although a portion of our investment portfolio (~9%) was in the equity market, and thus transiently lost value, the majority of our portfolio remains in cash or cash equivalents that were unaffected by the stock market indexes. Scott Silverman (Illinois) has done a tremendous job picking up where Eugene left off, and has made important contributions to enhancing the Division’s resources. In addition, the 2010 finances will be the first to benefit from the modest increase in Divisional dues (to $12.50 from $10), Scott and I will continue to closely monitor the health of the Division’s resources.

John Blanchard
Chair, ACS Division of Biological Chemistry

Other information found in the newsletter (award nomination information, future regional meetings, etc.) can be found throughout this site.

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