The UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry is pleased to announce that Professor Carolyn Bertozzi (Stanford) has been chosen for the 2022 Seaborg Medal.
The Seaborg Medal, established in 1987, is bestowed by the department for distinguished contributions to science, technological innovation, and/or public service in science. This is the highest honor awarded by our department.
We will honor Professor Carolyn Bertozzi at the 2022 Seaborg Symposium and Medal Dinner on Wednesday, August 17, 2022.
The Seaborg Symposium is the department’s annual celebration, centering around the science of the year’s Seaborg Medalist. For this year’s event we will have an afternoon symposium entitled “Bringing Chemistry to Life”, with talks by Bertozzi and four other prominent scientists – Frances Arnold (California Institute of Technology), Jennifer Prescher (University of California, Irvine), Alanna Schepartz (University of California, Berkeley), and Ellen Sletten (UCLA).
The symposium will take place at 1 p.m. on the UCLA campus in Lecture Hall CS 76 (between Young Hall and Geology). A poster session by postdocs, graduate students, and undergraduate students will take place before the symposium in the Court of Sciences patio starting at noon.
The Glenn T. Seaborg Medal will be presented to Bertozzi at the evening awards banquet in the Grand Horizon Ballroom at UCLA Covel Commons. The evening events will begin with a reception on the terrace starting at 6:00 p.m., followed by dinner and the medal awards ceremony, at which the poster session prizes will also be announced.
All are welcome to attend the Seaborg events. The symposium is free of charge but registration is required for the evening reception and dinner. The dinner ticket price and registration information will be available in late July at www.seaborg.ucla.edu. Please plan to join us for these exciting events honoring Bertozzi and her career.
About Professor Carolyn Bertozzi
Professor Carolyn Bertozzi is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Chemical & Systems Biology and Radiology (by courtesy) at Stanford University, and an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute. She completed her undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Harvard University in 1988 and her Ph.D. in Chemistry from UC Berkeley in 1993. After completing postdoctoral work at UCSF in the field of cellular immunology, she joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1996. In June 2015 she joined the faculty at Stanford University, coincident with the launch of Stanford’s ChEM-H institute.
Bertozzi’s research interests span the disciplines of chemistry and biology with an emphasis on studies of cell surface glycosylation pertinent to disease states. Her lab focuses on profiling changes in cell surface glycosylation associated with cancer, inflammation and bacterial infection, and on exploiting this information for the development of diagnostic and therapeutic approaches, most recently in the area of immuno-oncology.
Bertozzi has been recognized with many honors and awards for both her research and teaching accomplishments. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. Some awards of note include the 2022 Wolf Prize in Chemistry, the Lemelson-MIT award for inventors, Whistler Award, Ernst Schering Prize, MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, the ACS Award in Pure Chemistry, Tetrahedron Young Investigator Award, and Irving Sigal Young Investigator Award of the Protein Society. Her efforts in undergraduate education have earned her the UC Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award and the Donald Sterling Noyce Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.
About the Glenn T. Seaborg Medal
The Glenn T. Seaborg Medal was first awarded in 1987 to UCLA alumnus Nobel Laureate (1951 Chemistry) Glenn T. Seaborg (B.S. ’34) (pictured right), one of the most remarkable and influential chemists of the 20th Century and for whom element 106, Seaborgium, is named. The purpose of the medal is to honor persons who have made exceptional scientific contributions in the fields of chemistry or biochemistry. Awarded annually, the winner of the Seaborg Medal is selected by the executive committee of the UCLA Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry.
In addition to Seaborg, eight other Nobel Laureates have been honored with the Seaborg Medal – UCLA professors Donald Cram (1989) and Paul Boyer (1998), UCLA alumni Bruce Merrifield (1993) PhD ’49 and Richard Heck (2011) BS ’52/PhD ’54, and Richard Smalley (2002), Harold Varmus (2012), Stefan Hell (2015), and Richard Henderson (2018). To learn more, visit the Seaborg Medal Recipients website.
Questions? Please contact Isaiah Gutierrez, Seminar and Events Coordinator, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, 310-206-4409, isaiahgtz@chem.ucla.edu.
