Professor Wilfred van der Donk has been selected to receive a 2006 Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award from the American Chemical Society. The announcement of this highly competitive award was just made at the ACS National Meeting in Washington D.C. In addition to receiving $5000, a certificate, and a $40,000 unrestricted research grant, he will present an award address at the National ACS Meeting in San Francisco, CA, September 10-14, 2006.

Dr. van der Donk's research accomplishments are remarkable in their breadth and significance. He has answered a long-standing and important question relating to the action of a key enzyme (COX-2) involved in the body's physiological response to injury and infection. He has elucidated the mechanism by which certain enzymes render chlorocarbon pollutants less toxic. Further, he has uncovered the chemical pathway responsible for the enzymatic conversion of phosphite to phosphate, a reaction that has commercial potential in the manufacture of fine chemicals. Finally, he has developed a general method for the biosynthesis of entirely new kinds of lantibiotics, molecules that are powerful antibiotics of therapeutic significance.

Professor van der Donk has previously won the Burroughs-Wellcome New Investigator Award in the Pharmacological Sciences, the Research Innovation Award of the Research Corporation, the 3M Award for Non-tenured Faculty, a Beckman Young Investigator Award, the Cottrell Scholar Award of the Research Corporation, a Sloan Foundation Fellowship, and a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award. He also won the 2004 Pfizer Award of the Biological Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society. Locally, he has won the Helen Corley Petit Award of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and a School of Chemical Sciences Teaching Award.

He joins an elite list of other Illinois chemistry faculty members receiving this award. Recipients for the previous 10 years are Professors John Katzenellebogen, Jeffrey Moore, Kenneth Suslick and Steven Zimmerman.