Carolyn Bertozzi, a professor at Stanford University who today shared the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, spent her formative and most creative years at UC Berkeley.
After graduating from Harvard University in 1988, she earned her Ph.D. in chemistry from Berkeley in 1993 and, following postdoctoral and faculty positions elsewhere, returned to join the chemistry faculty and Berkeley Lab in 1996.
Says Mike Botchan, Dean of Biological Sciences: "Today's announcement of Carolyn Bertozzi's Nobel prize in Chemistry was in brilliant recognition of a truly creative scientist for work she did at UCB. Sighted by the Nobel Foundation today was her development of bioorthogonal chemical reactions (meaning chemistry not inferring with biology) to click together molecules to form within cells to report on the locations and functions of glycans. Glycans are complex sugar molecules and with proteins and nucleic acids are key macromolecules of life. Bertozzi is a generous colleague, a former faculty member who worked to build bridges between the departments of Chemistry and MCB."