Dr. Barbara Imperiali of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will present the address "Chemical Tools for the Study of Complex Biological Systems" as this year's annual Neckers Lecture at Hope College on Friday, Jan. 23, at 4 p.m. in room 102 of VanderWerf Hall.
Dr. Barbara Imperiali of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology will present the address "Chemical Tools for the Study of Complex Biological Systems" as this year's annual Neckers Lecture at Hope College on Friday, Jan. 23, at 4 p.m. in room 102 of VanderWerf Hall.
The public is invited. Admission is free.
Imperiali is the Ellen Swallow Richards Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Biology at MIT. She will speak about her research group's work in two primary areas: structural and functional proteomics, and signal transduction.
Imperiali is the recipient of a Sloan Fellowship (1993), a Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (1993), the ACS Cope Scholar Award (1996) and the Caltech Feynman Prize for Excellence in Teaching (1998). At MIT she has been awarded the School of Science Prize for excellence in undergraduate education (2002) and was recently named a Margaret MacVicar Fellow (2003) in recognition of her contributions to education at the Institute. In 2001, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
She received her B.Sc. in medicinal chemistry at University College London. She earned her Ph.D. in synthetic organic chemistry in 1983, working under the supervision of Professor Satoru Masamune at MIT, and did postdoctoral studies with the late Professor Robert Abeles at Brandeis University.
Imperiali began her independent career as an assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University in 1986. In 1989, she joined the faculty at the California Institute of Technology, where she earned the rank of professor of chemistry in 1997. She assumed her current appointment at MIT in July of 1999.
The James and Jeanette Neckers Lectureship and Student Assistance Fund through which Imperiali is speaking was established in 1984 by Dr. James W. and Jeanette Hoffman Neckers, members of the college's Class of 1923, to support annual lectureships in chemistry. Through additional gifts from Dr. Neckers, the fund has been expanded to include student summer research stipends and student scholarships.
Jeanette Neckers died on June 10, 1992. James Neckers, who lives in Carbondale, Ill., was chairman of the Department of Chemistry at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale for 37 of his 40 years at the university. Under his leadership, the department grew from a three-year offering in chemistry to granting the doctorate; the faculty grew from three to 23.
Refreshments will be served beginning at 3:30 p.m. VanderWerf Hall is located on 10th Street between Central and College avenues.