Booker Receives PECASE Award from President Bush

24 June 2004 — Squire J. Booker, assistant professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, has been recognized as one of 57 of the country’s most promising scientists and engineers by President George W. Bush with the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).

Booker received the award at the White House in recognition of his research on enzyme reactions, including his work with an enzyme involved in the synthesis of fatty acids, which lead to his discovery of a reaction unprecedented in solution chemistry. He also was honored for his leadership in education, including his distinguished teaching. Examples of his achievements include his bringing aspects of his research into the curriculum for the Introductory Biochemistry course and his encouraging underrepresented minority students to perform undergraduate research. In fact, undergraduates played a significant role in obtaining the preliminary data upon which the scientific portion of the award was based.

Booker is one of 20 researchers supported by the National Science Foundation to receive the award. Nominees were selected from junior faculty members who had received grants from NSF’s 2002 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program, the agency’s most prestigious award for new faculty members. CAREER awards provide five years of funding to support the work of those considered most likely to become academic leaders. Only 140 of the 2,900 CAREER award winners since 1996 subsequently have received the PECASE award, according to the NSF.

Booker earned his bachelor's degree in chemistry at Austin College in 1987 and his doctoral degree in chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994. He then was appointed a National Science Foundation NATO Fellow at Rene Decartes University in Paris, France, in 1994 and a National Institutes of Health Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Wisconsin in 1996 before joining the Penn State faculty in 1999.

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