Carolyn R. Bertozzi
The information listed below is current as of the date the transcript was finalized.
Interview Details
Interview Sessions
Abstract of Interview
Carolyn Bertozzi grew up in Lexington, Massachusetts, the second of three girls. Her father was a nuclear physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, her mother a secretary in MIT's physics department. Carolyn's father's four siblings, all born in Italy, also went into some branch of science. During the Great Depression Carolyn's maternal grandparents and uncle emigrated from Nova Scotia and established a farm. Carolyn's older sister, a "math genius" now teaches at Duke University, and her younger sister became a psychologist. It was expected that Carolyn and her sisters would do well in school, and Carolyn did, but she also played soccer in high school and was recruited to Harvard with what would be at any other school an athletic scholarship. She found soccer and later crew too time-consuming, however, and quit sports to devote herself to academics. She began as a biology major but in her second year took an organic chemistry class, which she loved, although she continued to take biology classes, she switched her major to chemistry. She was first in her class and eventually graduated summa cum laude, but Harvard's chemistry department was exclusively male at the time. As a result, she went to a lab in the biochemistry department, where Joseph Grabowski, her teacher for a physical organic chemistry class, asked her to work for him during the summer. He was so impressed with her work that he required her to write a graduation thesis, which he then submitted for an award of a substantial amount of money. He convinced her to go to graduate school at University of California at Berkeley. At Berkeley, she joined Mark Bednarski's bioorganic chemistry laboratory to study carbohydrates. Bednarski was also new, and Carolyn found him enthusiastic, and she wrote a number of grant proposals in his lab. She wrote her doctoral dissertation on the synthesis of carbohydrate analogues for biological applications. Continuing her interest in carbohydrates, and contrary to the advice of other chemists, Carolyn went to work in Steven Rosen's cell biology laboratory at the University of California, San Francisco, for her postdoc. There she studied the role of carbohydrates in inflammation and leukocyte adhesion. After her postdoctoral work, she accepted an assistant professorship at the University of California at Berkeley and set up her own laboratory. She and Rosen also founded a private company, Thios Pharmaceuticals, Inc. At Berkeley she enjoys teaching, finding her students very intelligent, hard-working, and interesting. In the laboratory she writes (and gets) grants, mentors (particularly women), and sets problems. She has published many journal articles. Her current research interests continue in glycobiology, which she sees as having potentially a wider clinical application. Now a tenured professor, she has a number of academic appointments and steady funding.
Education
Year | Institution | Degree | Discipline |
---|---|---|---|
1988 | Harvard University | AB | Chemistry |
1993 | University of California, Berkeley | PhD | Chemistry |
Professional Experience
University of California, San Francisco
University of California, Berkeley
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Honors
Year(s) | Award |
---|---|
1987 | Radcliffe Science Research Fellowship |
1987 | Phi Beta Kappa |
1987 | Danforth Teaching Award |
1988 | New England American Institute of Chemists Award |
1988 | Thomas T. Hoopes Undergraduate Thesis Prize |
1988 to 1991 | Office of Naval Research Graduate Fellowship |
1988 to 1993 | AT&T Bell Laboratories Graduate Fellowship |
1989 | Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award |
1990 | Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award |
1991 to 1992 | American Chemical Society Medicinal Chemistry Graduate Fellowship |
1992 | Bruce Mahan Teaching Award |
1993 to 1995 | American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellowship |
1995 | Camille and Henry Dreyfus New Faculty Award |
1996 | Exxon Education Fund Young Investigator Award |
1996 to 2000 | Pew Scholars Award in the Biomedical Sciences |
1997 | Burroughs Wellcome New Investigator Award in Pharmacology |
1997 | Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow |
1997 | Horace S. Isbell Award in Carbohydrate Chemistry (ACS) |
1998 | Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award |
1998 | Research Corporation Research Innovation Award |
1998 | Glaxo Wellcome Scholar |
1998 | Prytanean Faculty Award |
1998 | Beckman Young Investigator Award |
1998 to 2000 | Joel H. Hildebrand Chair in Chemistry |
1999 | Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (ACS) |
1999 | Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award |
1999 | MacArthur Foundation Award |
2000 | Presidential Early Career Award in Science and Engineering (PECASE) |
2000 | UC Berkeley Department of Chemistry Teaching Award |
2000 | Merck Academic Development Program Award |
2001 | ACS Award in Pure Chemistry |
2001 | UC Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Award |
2001 | Donald Sterling Noyce Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching |
2002 | Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science |
2002 | Irving Sigal Young Investigator Award of the Protein Society |
2003 | Elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences |
2004 | Iota Sigma Pi Agnes Fay Morgan Research Award |
2005 | Havinga Medal, Univ. Leiden |
2005 | T. Z. and Irmgard Chu Distinguished Professorship in Chemistry |
2005 | Elected member of the National Academy of Science |
Table of Contents
Family background. Parental expectations. Childhood interests and experiences. Attends junior high school and high school in Lexington, Massachusetts. Extracurricular activities. Her interest in music. Her grandmother's socialism vs. her mother's Protestant Christianity.
Attends Harvard University, majoring in chemistry. On soccer team at first, then crew. College experiences. Influential teachers. Women in chemistry departments. Works in Joseph Grabowski's physical chemistry laboratory for her senior thesis project.
Graduate school at University of California at Berkeley. More on women in chemistry departments. Works in Mark D. Bednarski's bioorganic chemistry laboratory. Bednarski's cancer. Bertozzi's doctoral dissertation on the synthesis of carbohydrate analogues for biological applications. Growing interest in biology.
Bertozzi's postdoctoral work in Steven D. Rosen's cell biology laboratory at the University of California, San Francisco. Studies the role of carbohydrates in inflammation and leukocyte adhesion. Creativity in science. Experiences at the University of California, San Francisco.
Accepts position at the University of California at Berkeley, sets up laboratory. Helps establish Thios Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Her teaching. Communications skills in science. Her mentoring style. Her role in the laboratory. Research on tubercle bacillus. Writing journal articles.
Bertozzi's current research in glycobiology chemistry. Qualities of a good scientist. Her students. Bertozzi's future research. Wider application of her work. Privatization of science. Life as a principal investigator. Patents. Impact of technology on her research. Bertozzi's academic appointments and scientific goals. Funding. Tenure at Berkeley. Balancing personal life and career. Gender issues in science. Bertozzi's partner. Women graduate students and principal investigators.