2020 Waterman Award

美国国家科学基金会（NSF）已将艾米丽巴尔斯库斯博士命名为2020年艾伦T。沃特曼奖该奖项是NSF的最高荣誉，每年表彰40岁以下或获得博士学位后不超过10年的杰出研究人员。在提名当年的12月31日之前获得学位。 该奖项资助获奖者在任何科学或工程领域的研究。今年，每位获奖者将在五年内获得100万美元的资助，用于在其领域进一步深造。Balskus博士是哈佛大学的化学和化学生物学教授。她的研究重点是描绘微生物组与其宿主之间的关系。 它导致了控制微生物中新发现的化学反应途径的能力，从而开发了制造对能源，生物医学和工业界具有重要价值的有机分子的新途径。这项研究导致了鉴定和分离含有环丙烷环的分子的方法，并证明它们在生物体接触毒素时会造成DNA损伤，这与癌症有关;前所未有的化学引导的基因组挖掘方法，导致胆碱利用基因的发现，相关关键酶的结构和功能的表征，以及设计这些酶的小分子抑制剂，作为工具和治疗方法;以及肠道微生物及其代谢左旋多巴的酶的鉴定（3，4-二羟基苯丙氨酸）广泛用于治疗帕金森病，发现了增加L-DOPA生物利用度的小分子。Balskus博士的工作获得了各种奖项，包括四面体青年研究者奖（2020年），布拉瓦尼克国家青年科学家奖化学奖得主（2019年），亚瑟C。科普学者奖（2018年）和辉瑞奖酶化学（2018年）从美国化学学会，被任命为HHMI-Gates教师学者（2016年），获得NSF职业奖（2015年），被评为35岁以下的35名创新者之一由麻省理工学院技术评论（2014年），并获得斯隆研究奖学金（2014年）。此外，她的贡献已被授予讲师荣誉，并已被确定为在国际会议中发挥领导作用的最前沿，其中包括在生物学戈登研究会议（2019年）的金属上发表索特曼奖演讲，并成为2019年关于肠道微生物群化学和生物学考虑的Keystone会议的共同组织者。她的工作已被刊登在自然通讯，科学和其他主要科学期刊。Balskus博士认为，指导学生和接触正在崛起的女科学家是她作为教育工作者和科学家的不可或缺的组成部分，她在科学界和一般社区的领导活动证明了这一点。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has named Dr. Emily Balskus one of the two 2020 recipients of its Alan T. Waterman Award. This award is NSF's highest honor that annually recognizes an outstanding researcher who is 40 years or younger or not more than 10 years beyond receipt of the Ph.D. degree, by December 31 of the year of the nomination. The award funds the recipient's research in any field of science or engineering. This year, each awardee will receive a $1 million grant over a five-year period for further advanced study in his or her field. Dr. Balskus is a professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard University. Her research focuses on delineating the relationships between microbiomes and their hosts. It has led to the ability to take control of newly discovered chemical reaction pathways in microorganisms, so as to develop new routes for making organic molecules that are of great value to the energy, biomedical, and industrial communities. This research has led to methods for identifying and isolating molecules containing cyclopropane rings and demonstrating that they cause DNA damage upon organism exposure to toxins, which has been linked to cancer; unprecedented chemically-guided genome mining approaches that have led to the discovery of choline utilization genes, characterization of the structures and functions of associated key enzymes, and the design of small molecule inhibitors of these enzymes that are being pursued as tools and therapeutics; and the identification of gut microbes and their enzymes that metabolize the L-DOPA (3,4-dihydroxylphenylalanine)widely utilized for the treatment of Parkinson's disease, with the discovery of small molecules that increase L-DOPA bioavailability. Dr. Balskus has received recognition for her work from a diverse group of professional and technical societies through a variety of awards, including the Tetrahedron Young Investigator Award (2020), the Laureate in Chemistry of the Blavatnik National Awards for Young Scientists (2019), the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (2018) and the Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry (2018) from the American Chemical Society, being named an HHMI-Gates Faculty Scholar (2016), receiving an NSF CAREER Award (2015), being named one of the top 35 innovators under 35 by the MIT Technology Review (2014), and receiving a Sloan Research Fellowship (2014). Furthermore, her contributions have been honored by lectureships and have been identified as being at the cutting edge through leadership roles in international conferences, which include giving the Saltman Award Lecture at the Metals in Biology Gordon Research Conference (2019) and being co-organizer of the 2019 Keystone Conference on chemical and biological considerations of the gut microbiota. Her work has been featured in Nature Communications, Science, and other major scientific journals. Dr. Balskus deems mentoring of students and outreach to rising female scientists as integral components of her role as an educator and scientist, as evidenced by her leading activities in the scientific and general communities.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.