Carolyn Bertozzi
HHMI Investigator; Director, ChEM-H, Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor in the School of Humanities and Sciences; Professor of Radiology and of Chemical and Systems Biology at Stanford University
Carolyn Bertozzi is the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Chemistry and Chemical and Systems Biology at Stanford University, an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and Co-Director of Stanford ChEM-H. She completed her undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Harvard University in 1988 and her Ph.D. in Chemistry from UC Berkeley in 1993. After postdoctoral work at UCSF in the field of cellular immunology, she joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1996. In 2015 she moved to Stanford University coincident with the launch of the new ChEM-H institute focusing on translational molecular science. Prof. Bertozzi is known for developing innovative technologies that open new avenues for biological discovery and therapeutic development. She launched the field of bioorthogonal chemistry, which has enabled many new experimental approaches in biological research including imaging methods, chemoproteomics, and in vivo drug targeting. Several of her inventions have been translated to commercial settings, including a technology for site-specific protein modification that is now used in antibody-drug conjugates that are in human clinical trials, antibody-enzyme conjugates that are in preclinical development for cancer immune therapy, and a platform for tuberculosis detection in patient sputum samples at the point of care. A recent innovation is the design of lysosome targeting chimeras (LYTACs) for targeted degradation of extracellular proteins.
Prof. Bertozzi’s work is highly recognized internationally. She holds three Honorary Doctorate Degrees, from Brown Univ., Duke Univ., and Freie Univ. Berlin and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2005 at the age of 39, one of the youngest chemists in the history of the institution. She has also been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the National Academy of Medicine (former Institute of Medicine), National Academy of Inventors and is a Foreign Member of the Royal Society. Her awards include the Arthur C. Cope Award of the American Chemical Society, the Heinrich Wieland Prize, the Ernst Schering Prize, a MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Award, the MIT-Lemelson Award, and the Chemistry for the Future Solvay Prize. Prof. Bertozzi has cofounded six biotechnology companies, advises several as a consultant or SAB member, and is a member of the Board of Directors of Eli Lilly & Company.