Kudos:

Dale Boger Elected to American Academy of Arts and Sciences
Dale Boger, who is Richard and Alice Cramer Professor of Chemistry at The Scripps Research Institute, has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is among 175 new fellows and 20 new foreign honorary members who include two former presidents of the United States; the Chief Justice of the United States; a Nobel laureate; winners of the Pulitzer Prize in poetry, drama, music, investigative reporting, and non-fiction; a former US poet laureate; and a member of the French Senate. Fellows and foreign honorary members are nominated and elected to the academy by current members.

"It gives me great pleasure to welcome these outstanding leaders in their fields to the academy," said Academy President Patricia Meyer Spacks. "Fellows are selected through a highly competitive process that recognizes individuals who have made preeminent contributions to their disciplines and to society at large."

Boger (B.Sc., University of Kansas, Lawrence; Ph.D., Harvard University) was a member of the faculty at the University of Kansas and Purdue University before joining the faculty of Scripps Research in 1991. Boger is internationally recognized for his work in organic synthesis, medicinal chemistry, heterocyclic chemistry, natural products total synthesis and biological evaluation, synthetic methodology development including combinatorial chemistry, and bioorganic chemistry. He has made seminal contributions to the understanding of DNA-drug interactions and small molecule stabilization or disruption of protein-protein interactions involved in signal transduction.

For more information about Boger, see his faculty web page. For more information about the award, see the American Academy of Arts and Sciences announcement.

Peter Vanderklish Honored at Fragile X Awareness Day
Scripps Research Assistant Professor Peter Vanderklish was among three researchers honored in ceremonies for the first California Fragile X Awareness Day, held April 18 on the University of California, San Diego campus.

"During the past three years, with funding from the FRAXA Research Foundation, Dr. Vanderklish has been studying neurons from the Fragile X knockout mouse in great depth," said Cindy de Grunchy, president of the Fragile X Center of San Diego whose 16-year-old son has fragile X syndrome, which is the leading cause of genetically inherited mental impairment. "[Dr. Vanderklish's] results have been very promising. One of the most noteworthy aspects of this line of research is that it strongly suggests that some of the biochemical, and possibly structural, changes seen in Fragile X brains may be reversible."

For more information on Fragile X syndrome and the Fragile X Center of San Diego, visit http://www.fragilexsandiego.org/home.html. For more information on Vanderklish's research, see his faculty web page.

Send comments to: mikaono[at]scripps.edu