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Sponsored by Bioconjugate Chemistry and the ACS Division of Colloid and Surface Chemistry, this award recognizes outstanding researchers for important recent advances in interfacing synthetic and biological systems.
Meet the Winner of 2017 Bioconjugate Chemistry Lectureship Award

Bioconjugate Chemistry and the ACS Division of Colloid and Surface Chemistry are pleased to announce that Professor Matthew B. Francis is the recipient of the 2017 Bioconjugate Chemistry Lectureship Award. The award will be presented at the Fall 2017 ACS National Meeting (August 20-24, 2017) in Washington, D.C.

"The second year of the BC Lecturer competition was even more competitive than last year. We had a very competitive field for this fellowship, but Matt Francis is a game-changing scientist. Matt is a true leader in the field of bioconjugation, seamlessly integrating the tools of synthetic chemistry and biology. His imaginative and innovative research has created new tools for bioconjugation, and applied them to challenges in both biomedicine and chemical biology, fitting perfectly the goal of the Bioconjugate Chemistry Lecturer Award to recognize the best scientists working at the interface between the biological and the man-made worlds."  - Dr. Vincent M. Rotello, Editor-in-Chief, Bioconjugate Chemistry.

This year’s award will be presented at the Fall ACS National Meeting, August 20-24, 2017, in Washington, D.C., as part of the Bioconjugate Chemistry Lecturer Symposium. Professor Francis will be presenting at this symposium, along with other prominent researchers in the field.
Bioconjugate Chemistry
Dr. Matt Francis was born in Ohio in 1971 and received his undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Miami University in Oxford, OH in 1994. From 1994-1999 he attended graduate school at Harvard University, working in the lab of Prof. Eric Jacobsen. His Ph.D. research involved the development of combinatorial strategies for the discovery and optimization of new transition metal catalysts. He then moved to UC Berkeley, where he was a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science. He worked under the guidance of Prof. Jean Fréchet, focusing on the development of DNA-based methods for the assembly of polymeric materials and the application of dendrimers for drug delivery. Matt started his independent career in the UC Berkeley Chemistry Department in 2001, and has built a research program involving the development of new organic reactions for protein modification. These new chemical tools have then been used to modify biomolecular assemblies to prepare new materials for diagnostic imaging, wastewater treatment, and solar cell development. Over the years, Matt has received the Dreyfus Foundation New Faculty Award, an NSF Career Award, and a GlaxoSmithKline Young Investigator Award. He has also received the Departmental Teaching Award on three occasions, the Noyce Prize for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, and the 2009 University-wide Distinguished Teaching Award. He is currently a Full Professor and the Executive Associate Dean of the Berkeley College of Chemistry. In addition, he is a Faculty Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.