Stephen Benkovic (VVP 2012), Eberly Professor of Chemistry at Penn State, has been elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), among 168 leaders of invention and innovation.  Election to NAI Fellow status is a high professional distinction accorded to academic inventors who have demonstrated a highly prolific spirit of innovation in creating or facilitating outstanding inventions that have made a tangible impact on quality of life, economic development, and the welfare of society.  Steve Benkovic is  honored for his invention of boron-containing pharmaceuticals.  Read more...

Ivan Dikic (VVP 2015) and his team at Goethe University will be working with Mainz University, the Institute of Molecular Biology in Mainz and the Georg-Speyer-Haus to set up a Collaborative Research Center (CRC) on selective autophagy with an 11 million Euro grant from the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft/DFG).  The objective of the CRC is a better understanding of autophagy at the molecular and cellular level. In future, the researchers hope to be able to specifically target autophagy for improving the therapy of diverse diseases.  Read more...