Dr. Virginia W. Cornish has been awarded an NSF Postdoctoral Research Fellowship in Chemistry. Dr. Cornish received the doctoral degree from the University of California at Berkeley under the supervision of Professor Peter G. Schultz. Dr. Cornish will continue research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the sponsorship of Professor Robert T. Sauer. The postdoctoral research examines the importance of N- and C-cap residues in stabilizing alpha-helices. The work uses genetic selections to isolate proteins with particular residues in the N- and C-cap positions, as well as x-ray crystallography and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy to characterize the three-dimensional structure of the proteins. Understanding is gained into how to design genetic selections so that in addition to engineering proteins with novel catalytic properties, one my use the selections to learn about the requirement for successful catalysis. The Postdoctoral Research Fellowships in Chemistry Program is viewed as an important infrastructural program designed to broaden the knowledge and experience of new Ph. D.s and attract them into meaningful careers in contemporary chemical research and teaching.
