Scripps Scientists Honored with Prestigious Awards

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Farooq Azam

Four leading scientists at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at UC San Diego have been honored with awards that recognize their accomplishments in their respective fields of study. The awards span from marine microbiology to geophysics to pharmaceutical sciences and ocean leadership, demonstrating the breadth of Scripps research in ocean, atmosphere and earth sciences.

Scripps Distinguished Professor Farooq Azam of the Marine Biology Division has been selected to receive the 2013 D.C. White Research and Mentoring Award from the American Society for Microbiology. The award recognizes “distinguished accomplishments in interdisciplinary research and mentoring in microbiology,” hallmarks attributed to the award’s namesake, famed microbiologist David C. White.

Azam is a renowned marine microbiologist who studies the ecology of marine bacteria and viruses, their diversity and their population dynamics. He researches the biochemical and molecular adaptations of bacteria for life in the ocean environment. In addition, Azam is examining the significance of bacteria and viruses in the structure and function of the microbial food web in the ocean.

The award includes a cash prize of $5,000, a commemorative plaque and an invitation to present the D.C. White Research and Mentoring Award lecture next May at the American Society for Microbiology’s general meeting in Denver.

Cathy Constable

Scripps Geophysics Professor Cathy Constable has been elected a recipient of the Humboldt Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Constable’s main research interest is Earth’s magnetic field, with a particular focus on its long-term variations.

The award, worth approximately $75,000, is granted in recognition of a researcher’s lifetime achievements to date. It acknowledges fundamental discoveries, new theories or insights that have had a significant impact on the recipient’s discipline and comes with the expectation she will continue producing cutting-edge achievements in the future.

Constable will use the award to support collaborative research with colleagues at Helmholtz-Zentrum Potsdam, Deutsches GeoForschungsZentrum, in Potsdam, Germany. She plans to collaborate with German scientist Monika Korte in studying millennial-scale time variations in the geomagnetic field, with particular emphasis on the longevity of the South Atlantic Magnetic Anomaly, a region of low magnetic field strength that has been expanding over the past few hundred years and has been known to disrupt electronics operations in low Earth-orbiting satellites.

Brad Moore

Brad Moore, a professor of oceanography and pharmaceutical sciences in the Scripps Center for Marine Biotechnology and Biomedicine, and also jointly appointed with UC San Diego’s Skaggs School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, has been awarded a 2013 Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society (ACS).

This award is given annually “to recognize and encourage excellence in organic chemistry” and consists of a $5,000 prize and a $40,000 unrestricted research grant.

Moore’s multi-disciplinary research at the interface of organic chemistry and molecular biology is intimately tied to marine genomics and explores the unique molecular strategies used by marine microorganisms to produce new therapeutic agents from the sea.

Moore, who will be delivering an awards address at the Arthur C. Cope Symposium in September 2013 during the fall national meeting of the ACS in Indianapolis, also was recently elected vice president of the American Society of Pharmacognosy, the preeminent society for the study of natural product chemistry and will become the organization’s president next summer.

Tony Haymet

Scripps Director Tony Haymet has been honored with an Excellence Award from the Dr. Werner Petersen Foundation in Kiel, Germany. The Petersen Foundation bestows such honors to leading international scientists for excellence in their field. Haymet was recognized with an Excellence Professorship award for “outstanding contributions in the field of international leadership in ocean sciences.”

As part of the award, Haymet has been invited to present a public lecture at the Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel (GEOMAR), as well as provide a thematic short course for GEOMAR graduate students. A highly distinguished chemistry researcher with more than 175 peer-reviewed scientific articles, Haymet has been Director of Scripps as well as Vice Chancellor for Marine Sciences and Dean of the Graduate School of Marine Sciences at UC San Diego since September 2006.