Bryan Dickinson wins 2024 Tetrahedron Young Investigators award for Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry
Professor Bryan Dickinson of the Department of Chemistry has won the 2024 Tetrahedron Young Investigators award for Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry.
The Tetrahedron Young Investigator Awards were created in 2005 by the Executive Board of Editors and the Publisher of Tetrahedron Publications. The award is presented to individuals under 40 years of age who have exhibited "exceptional creativity and dedication" in the fields of Organic Synthesis and of Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry respectively.
Each award has a separate voting committee, with the Editors of Tetrahedron and Tetrahedron Letters voting on the Organic Synthesis Award, and the Editors of Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry and Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry Letters, voting on the Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry Award.
This isn’t the first time a member of the University of Chicago Department of Chemistry has been a recipient of the Tetrahedron award. Professor Guangbin Dong won the 2021 Young Investigators award for Organic Synthesis. Relatedly, Professor Chuan He won the 2023 Tetrahedron Prize for Creativity in Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry.
As part of the award ceremony, Dickinson will give a plenary lecture at the 25th Tetrahedron Symposium 2025 in Bruges, Belgium, where they will be formally presented with his award. He will likewise be presented certificate and an award of $5,000. Furthermore, a special issue of Tetrahedron will be compiled in his honor.
Professor Dickinson earned his B.S. in Biochemistry from the University of Maryland in 2005, and his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 2010 from the University of California at Berkeley for work performed under the supervision of Professor Christopher Chang. He then moved to Harvard University as a Jane Coffin Childs Memorial postdoctoral fellow under the supervision of Professor David Liu. He joined the faculty at the University of Chicago in the Department of Chemistry in the Summer of 2014, was promoted to Associate Professor in 2019, and Professor in 2023.
The Dickinson Group employs synthetic organic chemistry, molecular evolution, and protein design to develop molecular technologies to study and control chemistry in living systems. The group's current primary research interests include: 1) developing new evolution technologies to reprogram and control biomolecular interactions, 2) engineering RNA-targeting biotechnologies as new therapeutic platforms, and 3) developing novel proximity-labeling chemistries to study biomolecular interactions. Bryan has been recognized by multiple prizes and awards, including the Sloan Foundation Research Fellowship, NSF CAREER Award, Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, and ACS Chemical Biology Young Investigator Award, and Bryan was named an Investigator of the Chan Zuckerberg Biohub this year.
Many Congratulations to Professor Dickinson.
Previous recipients of the Tetrahedron Young Investigator Awards
- 2024: Thomas Maimone, Organic Synthesis;
Xiang David Li, Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry - 2023: Bill Morandi, Organic Synthesis;
Georg Winter, Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry - 2022: Franziska Schoenebeck, Organic Synthesis;
Yimon Aye, Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry - 2021: Guangbin Dong, Organic Synthesis;
Neal Devaraj, Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry - 2020: Nuno Maulide, Organic Synthesis;
Emily Balskus, Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry - 2019: Ryan Shenvi, Organic Synthesis;
Raphaël Rodriguez, Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry - 2018: Seth Herzon, Organic Synthesis;
Matthew Fuchter, Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry - 2017: Ang Li, Organic Synthesis;
Xiaoguang Lei, Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry - 2016: Neil Garg, Organic Synthesis;
Matthew Disney, Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry - 2015: Yoshiaki Nakao, Organic Synthesis;
Maja Köhn, Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry - 2014: Sarah E. Reisman, Organic Synthesis;
Rudi Fasan, Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry - 2013: Melanie Sanford, Organic Synthesis;
Ashraf Brik, Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry - 2012: Zhang-Jie Shi, Organic Synthesis;
B.G. Davis, Bioorganic and Medicinal Chemistry