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One of the world's leading cave archaeologists and an authority on protein structure and folding will receive Washington University's second annual faculty achievement awards. The selection was announced Saturday, April 15, at the Chancellor's Gala in Holmes Lounge. The awards will be conferred at a public event in the fall.
Carl Frieden, Ph.D., the Alumni Endowed Professor and head of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biophysics at the School of Medicine, is the winner of the Carl and Gerty Cori Faculty Achievement Award. Patty Jo Watson, Ph.D., the Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished Professor of Anthropology in Arts & Sciences, will receive the Arthur Holly Compton Faculty Achievement Award. The awards recognize outstanding academic accomplishments and service.
"The faculty achievement awards provide a wonderful opportunity annually to recognize two standout members among the University's many fine scholars and professors," said Chancellor Mark S. Wrighton. "This year's recipients are truly exemplary. Their research and scholarship, recognized prominence in their fields, and service and dedication to the University community comprise the bases for the important recognition they are receiving."
The award includes a $5,000 honorarium. Watson and Frieden will address the University community at the awards ceremony next fall, summarizing their scholarly work.
"Dr. Frieden is an internationally known biochemist whose career began in the early days of the field," said Arnold W. Strauss, M.D., the Alumni Professor of Pediatrics at the medical school and outgoing chair of the Faculty Senate Council, which established the awards with Wrighton. "Even after more than 40 years at Washington University, he continues excellent work in the laboratory and serves as a role model and mentor for young bench scientists.
"Professor Watson has shown similar commitment, leadership and achievement during her more than four decades at the University," Strauss continued. "One of her colleagues commented that if there were a Nobel prize in anthropology, she would have won it long ago."
Strauss co-chaired the advisory committee making the selections with Gerhild S. Williams, Ph.D., the Barbara Schaps Thomas and David M. Thomas Professor in the Humanities, professor of Germanic languages and literatures in Arts & Sciences and associate vice chancellor for academic affairs. The committee included three members each from Arts & Sciences and the medical school and one member from each of the University's other six schools.
Criteria for selection are:
She began her career excavating prehistoric sites in Iraq, Iran and Turkey, and then shifted her primary focus to North America, where she has excavated prehistoric pueblos in New Mexico and rock shelters and shell mounds in Kentucky. She is especially well known for her work with artifacts left by prehistoric people who explored and mined portions of the world's longest cave -- Kentucky's Mammoth Cave system.
Author of nearly 100 scientific articles and numerous highly regarded books, Watson's most influential publications are two books on her Mammoth Cave research, two on archaeological theory and articles on procedures she has developed for recovering charred botanical remains from archaeological sites.
She is a member of both the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences and a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
Frieden focuses on a major unsolved problem in biochemistry -- how proteins, which begin as long strings of amino acids, fold into their correct shapes, given that there are millions of possible 3-D configurations. He is using a variety of techniques to examine the structures of intermediates that arise during folding and is exploring a number of different protein systems. They include intestinal fatty acid binding protein, which is involved in fatty acid metabolism, and the enzyme dihydrofolate reductase, a target for a number of anticancer and antibacterial drugs.
Frieden's group also is studying the mechanism by which certain bacterial chaperones help proteins refold and interactions between proteins, especially those that form the cellular skeleton. Other interests include the relationship between protein structure and function and the catalytic mechanisms of certain enzymes.
Frieden came to the medical school as a postdoctoral fellow in 1955 and has been on the faculty since 1957. In 1988, he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and selected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
