3/21/2005

Two QB3 scientists receive HHMI funding honor

Two UC San Francisco professors affiliated with QB3 were named March 21 as Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigators, a highly prized honor that carries significant, long-term research support.

Joseph DeRisi, Ph.D., UCSF associate professor of biochemistry, and Kevan Shokat, Ph.D., UCSF professor of cellular and molecular pharmacology, are among 43 scientists from 31 institutions nationwide named as new recipients of the honor.

Joseph DeRisi

At UCSF, 15 other UCSF scientists also hold the prestigious HHMI investigator status, among the highest number of any institution.

DeRisi’s and Shokat’s selection now brings the HHMI totals in QB3 to 16, with 7 at UC San Francisco, 7 at UC Berkeley, and 2 at UC Santa Cruz.

DeRisi, who holds the Gordon M. Tomkins Chair, helped pioneer the field of microarray technology, in which gene activity is revealed on a glass slide. He has used the microarrays he designed to make major advances in understanding such infectious diseases as SARS (severe acute respiratory syndrome) and malaria.

Kevan Shokat

Shokat, a leader in the new field of chemical genetics, has developed a number of innovative techniques to tease apart the function of vital signaling molecules, called protein kinases, which are active in all cells. These proteins are responsible for most of the molecule-to-molecule communication in cells - cascades of signals that direct movement and metabolism, cancer, and cell death.

In addition to DeRisi and Shokat, the other QB3-affiliated faculty members at UC San Francisco who are HHMI Investigators are David A. Agard, Erin K. O’Shea, Ronald D. Vale, Peter Walter, and Jonathan S. Weissman. UC Berkeley’s QB3-affiliated HHMI Investigators are Adam Arkin, Carolyn Bertozzi, Carlos Bustamante, Jennifer A. Doudna, John Kuriyan, Eva Nogales, and Robert Tjian. UC Santa Cruz’s QB3-affiliated HHMI Investigators are David Haussler and Yishi Jin.

A nonprofit medical research organization, The Howard Hughes Medical Institute is dedicated to discovering and disseminating new knowledge in the basic life sciences. The Institute prizes intellectual daring and seeks to preserve the autonomy of its scientists as they pursue their research. HHMI was established in 1953 by the aviator-industrialist and is headquartered in Chevy Chase, Md.

Related links

For more on DeRisi’s and Shokat’s research, visit UCSF Today.

HHMI web page