It was recently announced that Professor Paul Hergenrother will receive a grant of $40,000 from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation to be used in support of his research. The Sloan Fellowships are intended to enhance the careers of the very best young faculty members in seven fields of science: chemistry, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, computer science, economics, mathematics, neuroscience, and physics. Only about 20 Sloan awards are given annually in the field of chemistry.
Paul Hergenrother joined the University of Illinois faculty in the fall of 2001 following completion of a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard. He is at the forefront of efforts to combat the escalating problem of antibiotic resistant bacteria. (News Bureau article) Dr. Hergenrother received his B.S. in chemistry from the University of Notre Dame in 1994 and went on to obtain a Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Texas at Austin in 1999. While at Texas he received an American Chemical Society graduate student fellowship and the Roche Award for Excellence in Organic Chemistry. Since joining the Illinois faculty he has subsequently received numerous other awards, including a Beckman Young Investigator Award, a Research Corporation Research Innovation Award and a NSF-CAREER Award.
The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, a philanthropic nonprofit institution, was established in 1934 by Alfred Pritchard Sloan, Jr., then President and Chief Executive Officer of the General Motors Corporation. The Foundation supports programs in science and technology, the american standard of living and economic performance, education and careers in science and technology, and selected national and civic issues.