Professor Michael Jung has been selected to receive the 2015 SCALACS Tolman Medal.
The medal is awarded each year by the Southern California Section of the American Chemical Society (SCALACS) in recognition of the medalist’s outstanding contributions to chemistry. Prof. Jung will be presented with the medal at an award banquet to be held in Los Angeles in Spring 2016.
The Tolman Medal is named in honor of Richard C. Tolman, a pioneering chemist at Caltech during the first half of the 20th century, who made key discoveries on electrons, among other significant scientific findings. Tolman Medal recipients include eight Nobel Prize winners, two from UCLA. The first Tolman Medal was awarded in 1960 to UCLA Chemistry and Biochemistry Prof. William G. Young in 1960 for whom Young Hall is named.
Prof. Jung worked with Drs. Charles Sawyers and Howard Scher of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to develop the anti-androgen drug enzalutamide (Xtandi), which has been found effective in slowing or stopping the progression of prostate cancer for several months and received FDA approval in 2012.
He earned his Ph.D. at Columbia University and did post-doctoral research in Zurich before joining the faculty of UCLA, where he has taught for more than 40 years. In addition to his role in the department of chemistry and biochemistry, he is director of the David Geffen School of Medicine Bioscience Synthetic Chemistry Core and a member of the California NanoSystems Institute, and he holds a joint position in the Department of Molecular and Medical Pharmacology
Prof. Jung currently consults for 21 industrial laboratories in both biotech and big pharma settings. He is an authority on synthetic organic and medicinal chemistry and has 60 patents and/or applications arising from both his consulting activities and his own research. His current interests include several collaborative projects with MD and biologists at UCLA for the treatment of many diseases, e.g., cancer, viral diseases, infections, harmful radiation effects, etc.
Prof. Jung is the 15th UCLA Chemistry and Biochemistry faculty member to be awarded the medal. Previous winners are William G. Young (1960), Francis E. Blacet (1968), Robert L. Pecsok (1970), Howard Reiss (1973), Herbert Kaesz (1980), Nobel Laureate Paul D. Boyer (1981), Nobel Laureate Donald C. Cram (1984), M. Frederick Hawthorne (1986), Mostafa El-Sayed (1989), Christopher S. Foote (1995), Kendall N. Houk (1998), Fred Wudl (2005), Joan S. Valentine (2008), Richard B. Kaner (2009).
To learn more about Prof. Jung’s research visit his group’s website.
The news about Prof. Jung’s Tolman award was published on the UCLA Newsroom Faculty Bulletin Board.
