Leonardo (Leo) Betancurt is the recipient of the 2024 Founders Award. He is a Ph.D. Candidate jointly researching with Kelly Zatopek’s lab at New England Biolabs and Ludovic Sauguet’s lab at Institut Pasteur and gave his talk, “Proofreading mechanism for family D DNA polymerases” at the 2024 Enzyme Mechanisms Conference in Naples, FL.

Professor Richard B. Silverman of Northwestern University is the recipient of the 2024 Abeles and Jencks Award for the Chemistry of Biological Processes. His first publication with Dr. Abeles (“Inactivation of Pyridoxal Phosphate-Dependent Enzymes by Mono- and Polyhaloalanines”) set the stage for a truly distinguished career and a body of work that showed how mechanistic enzymology could be used to develop a drug by unravelling the fine details of the inactivation process and using these findings to make efficient and specific inactivators.

Prof. Joseph Cotruvo, Jr. of the Pennsylvania State University is the recipient of the 2024 Eli Lilly Award in Biological Chemistry. Prof. Cotruvo is being recognized for his seminal discoveries in the area of the f-block, rare earth element (REE) sensing and biology. His group has described fundamental features of REE coordination chemistry by proteins, and their role in microorganisms.

Professor Craig M. Crews, John C. Malone Professor of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology at Yale University is the recipient of the 2023 Bristol Myers Squibb Award in Enzyme Chemistry. He also holds joint appointments in the departments of Chemistry and Pharmacology and is the Executive Director of the Yale Center for Molecular Discovery.

Professor Marty Bollinger, Russell and Mildred Marker Professor of Natural Products Chemistry and Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Penn State University is the recipient of the 2023 Abeles and Jencks Award for the Chemistry of Biological Processes.

The ACS Chemical Biology Young Investigator Award honors the contributions of an early-career individual who is doing outstanding work in chemical biology. The first winner of this annual award, Dr. Bryan Dickinson from The University of Chicago, will present the ACS Chemical Biology Young Investigator Lecture during the ACS Spring 2023 Meeting & Exposition March 26 – 30 in Indianapolis, IN.

The very first Abeles and Jencks Award for the Chemistry of Biological Processes was awarded to Prof. Karen Allen, and she gave her award address at the Fall 2022 ACS meeting in Chicago; however, her medal was still being made at that time! The beautiful medal has now been delivered to the awardee!