Two
Inaugural Vagelos Chairs in
Chemistry:
David
Christianson & Michael Therien
SAS
Dean Samuel H. Preston has announced the
inaugural holders of two new chairs. Dr.
David W. Christianson has been named the
inaugural holder of the Roy and Diana
Vagelos Professorship in Chemistry and
Chemical Biology and Dr. Michael J. Therien
has been named the inaugural holder of
the Alan MacDiarmid Endowed Term Chair
in Chemistry.
Dr.
Christianson joined the Department
of Chemistry as an assistant professor
in 1988, was appointed full professor
in 1996, and held the Edmund and
Louise Kahn Endowed Term Chair in
the Natural Sciences from 1999 to
2002. Before coming to Penn, he was
a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard
University, where he also earned
A.B. and Ph.D. degrees in 1983 and
1987, respectively. He is well known
for his work in biological chemistry,
focusing on the structure and function
of metal-requiring enzymes. In recent
years, his research has illuminated
complex molecular mechanisms in the
biosynthesis of terpenes, a family
of natural products that includes
menthol, cholesterol, and the anticancer
drug Taxol. He has also discovered
a new metalloenzyme that plays a
key role in the chemistry of male
and female sexual arousal.
He
has been named an Office of Naval
Research Young Investigator, an Alfred
P. Sloan Foundation Research Fellow,
a Searle Scholar, and a Camille and
Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar. In
1999, he received the Pfizer Award
in Enzyme Chemistry from the Biological
Chemistry Division of the American
Chemical Society. Dr. Christianson
teaches biochemistry and serves as
an adviser in the Roy and Diana Vagelos
Scholars Program for the Molecular
Life Sciences. The outstanding undergraduate
students in this program comprise
the next generation of biomedical
scientists who will have a true understanding
of living systems at the molecular
level.
This
chair was created in 2002 by Dr.
P. Roy Vagelos, C'50, Hon'99, and
his wife Diana T. Vagelos. Dr. Vagelos,
who majored in chemistry as a Penn
undergraduate, is the former chairman
of the University's Board of Trustees
and the retired chairman of Merck & Co.,
Inc. Mrs. Vagelos is a former Overseer
of the University of Pennsylvania
Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology.
Dr.
Therien has been a member of the
Department of Chemistry since 1990
and was appointed full professor
in 1997. He received his undergraduate
education at St. Andrews University
(Scotland) and the University of
California, Los Angeles, graduating
with a B.S. in 1982. He was awarded
his Ph.D. from the University of
California, San Diego, in 1987, following
which he spent three years at the
California Institute of Technology
as an NIH Postdoctoral Research Fellow.
His current research interests include
probing mechanisms in bioinorganic
and bioorganic electron transfer
reactions, synthesizing chromophores
and materials that display unusual
optoelectronic and nonlinear optical
properties, introducing new design
concepts that will enable the control
of supramolecular photophysical properties,
and building new catalysts that activate
and facilitate multielectron redox
reactions of small molecules.
Dr.
Therien's previous honors have included
fellowships from the Dreyfus and
Alfred P. Sloan Foundations and young
investigator awards from the Journal
of Porphyrins and Phthalocyanines, the
National Science Foundation, E.I.
duPont de Nemours, the Beckman Foundation,
and the Searle Scholars Program.
This
chair was established by Dr. and
Mrs. Vagelos in 2002 (Almanac,
January 29, 2002) in honor of
Nobel laureate and Blanchard Professor
of Chemistry Dr. Alan MacDiarmid.
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