Scripps Chemist to Present Chemerda Lectures in Science
on 25 and 26 April

17 April 2006—Peter G. Schultz, the Scripps Professor of Chemistry at the Scripps Research Institute and director of the Genomics Institute at the Novartis Research Foundation, will present the 2006 John M. Chemerda Lectures in Science on 25 and 26 April on the Penn State University Park campus. The first lecture, titled "An Expanding Genetic Code," is intended for a general audience and will take place at 6:00 p.m. on Tuesday, 25 April, in the Berg Auditorium, 100 Life Sciences Building. The second lecture, titled "Synthesis at the Interface of Chemistry and Biology—From Antibodies to Stem Cells," will take place at 12:00 noon on Wednesday, 26 April, in the Berg Auditorium, 100 Life Sciences Building. These free public lectures are sponsored by the Penn State Eberly College of Science.

Schultz's research spans the interface of chemistry, biology, and materials science. He uses the tools and principles of chemistry in combination with the processes of living cells to create molecules with novel properties and functions. By studying the structure and function of the resulting molecules, he hopes to gain new insights into the molecular mechanisms of complex biological and chemical systems.

Early in his career, Schultz showed that the natural molecular diversity of the immune system could be exploited to generate catalytic antibodies. This work led to a wide array of selective enzyme-like catalysts. Schultz then extended this notion of molecular diversity to a range of problems in chemistry, biology, and materials science. Using libraries of combinatorial materials, he has been able to identify materials with novel optical, electronic, and magnetic properties. He has used combinatorial methods to identify small molecules that control the differentiation and self-renewal of embryonic and adult stem cells, and that interrupt the differentiation of lineage-committed cells. He also has used genomic libraries to identify novel proteins involved in cell transformation, development, and cell signaling.

Schultz pioneered a method for adding new building blocks, beyond the common twenty amino acids, to the genetic codes of both prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Over thirty such amino acids have been encoded genetically in bacteria and yeast. These unnatural amino acids have unique chemical properties such as photoreactivity, chemical reactions, or fluorescence. This technology may make possible the generation of proteins, or even organisms, with novel or enhanced properties.

Schultz has received numerous awards including the Alan T. Waterman Award from the National Science Foundation in 1988, the American Chemical Society Award in Pure Chemistry in 1990, the Wolf Prize in Chemistry from the Wolf Foundation in Israel in 1994, the Alfred Bader Award in Bioorganic and Bioinorganic Chemistry from the American Chemical Society in 2000, the Paul Erhlich and Ludwig Darmstaedter Prize from the Paul Ehrlich Foundation in Germany in 2002, and the Arthur C. Cope Award from the American Chemical Society in 2006. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences. He is active on many editorial and scientific advisory boards and has founded several companies that apply diversity-based approaches to problems in chemistry, materials science, and medicine.

Schultz received his bachelor’s and doctoral degrees from the California Institute of Technology in 1979 and 1984, respectively. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1984. He joined the faculty of the University of California at Berkeley as assistant professor of chemistry in 1985, was promoted to associate professor in 1987, and to professor in 1989. He was a principal investigator at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory from 1985 to 2003, and was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator from 1994 to 1998. In 1999, he joined the faculty at the Scripps Research Institute as the Scripps Professor of Chemistry, and also was named director of the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation.

The John M. Chemerda Lectures in Science are named in honor of John M. Chemerda, a member of the Penn State Class of 1935.

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