Announcement - december 1, 2010

ACS Founders’ Travel Award to Dr. Paul D. Cook

Dr. Paul D. Cook (Richard Armstrong lab) at Vanderbilt University is the 2011 winner of the Founders' Travel Award. The Award is administered by the American Chemical Society Division of Biological Chemistry and consists of a $2,000 travel grant to attend the Enzyme Mechanisms Conference and present a lecture on their work. The award is given every two years, is highly competitive and based on the nominee's meeting abstract, previous accomplishments and a letter of nomination. Dr. Cook is the second person selected for this award. Dr. Cook will present his lecture next month at the 22nd Winter Enzyme Mechanism Conference held in St. Pete Beach, FL, January, 2011.

This award is to support the participation of students and/or post-docs at the Winter Enzyme Mechanisms Conference.

Tom Bruice, Bill Jencks, and Myron Bender, as a mechanism to foster collegial interactions within the community of chemists and biochemists interested in understanding the chemical basis for enzymatic catalysis and the regulation of enzyme action, founded the Winter Enzyme Mechanisms Conference in 1969. The passing of William P. Jencks on January 5 of 2007 coincided with the 20th meeting of the Winter Enzyme Mechanisms Conference in St. Petersburg, Florida, and this loss was felt keenly by many senior participants at that conference. The interest in recognizing Bill’s many contributions to mechanistic enzymology, in a manner that would help to ensure the vibrancy of the community that he helped to create, resulted in the creation of the “Founders Travel Award”, which will support the participation of students and/or post-docs at the Winter Enzyme Mechanisms Conference. The ACS Biological Chemistry Division will manage the investment of funds contributed for this award and has established the process for the competitive selection of the awardees from abstracts submitted to the conference.