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The annual awards, this year given to two chemists age 35 or younger before April 30, 2002, are highly prestigious accomplishments in the field of organic chemistry. They are given to recognize and encourage excellence in organic chemistry.
This year's other Cope Young Scholar Award went to Matthew D. Shair, Ph.D., of Harvard University.
The award consists of $5,000, a certificate and a $40,000 unrestricted research grant to be assigned by the recipient to any university or nonprofit institution. Wooley is required to deliver a lecture at the annual Arthur C. Cope Symposium to be held as part of the ACS's annual meeting in August 2002 in Boston.
"This is wonderful news," said Joseph J.H. Ackerman, Ph.D., the William Greenleaf Elliot Professor of Chemistry and department chair. "Congratulations to Karen Wooley, and to the department. This is an extremely prestigious award that reflects well on Washington University. It's an excellent way to begin the new school year."
Wooley's award citation notes "her seminal accomplishments at the interface of organic, polymer and materials chemistry, including the development of methodologies for the preparation of well-defined nanometer-scale macromolecules, shell crosslinked knedel-like nanoparticles and nanocages, and the elucidation of original concepts in synthetic polymer chemistry for the synthesis of hydrolytically degradable polymers."
Wooley's research has drawn considerable professional and popular interest in recent years. Her work was cited in the July issue of Discover as a finalist for the annual Discover awards. She is widely considered to be in the forefront of the emerging field of nanoscopically defined organic materials.
Wooley is perhaps best known for her creation of tiny synthetic polymer particles that mimic viruses and show potential for a new direction in gene therapy and other biomedical applications. The nanoparticle goes by the descriptive name of knedel (k-ned-l), for its similarity to a popular Polish dumpling. The knedels are shell cross-linked structures surrounding a hydrophobic, or water insoluble, core domain. They are too small to be seen by the naked eye (one nanometer is one-billionth of a meter); their diameters range from 10 to 100 nanometers. They are actually close in size to many proteins and viruses.
In 2000, Wooley and researchers in her lab hollowed out the knedel core to produce "nanocages," into which someday researchers might be able to pack peptides, genes, proteins and small molecule drugs for delivery in the body.
Wooley earned a bachelor of science degree in chemistry from Oregon State University in 1988 and then studied under the direction of Jean M. J. FrŽchet, Ph.D., at Cornell University, obtaining a doctorate in polymer/organic chemistry in 1993. She then began an academic career as an assistant professor of chemistry at Washington University and was promoted in 1999 to full professor with tenure.
Since 1996, Wooley also has held an appointment in the Division of Biological and Biomedical Sciences Bioorganic Chemistry Program. Her research interests include the synthesis and characterization of degradable polymers, unique macromolecular architectures and complex polymer assemblies, for which she has received young investigator awards from the National Science Foundation (1994-99), the Army Research Office (1996-99) and the Office of Naval Research (1998-2001). She was named as a DuPont Young Professor (1996-99).
Wooley currently serves the ACS Division of Polymer Chemistry as the publications chair and as an alternate councilor.
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