Boehringer Ingelheim Award

The 2010 winner is:

Luke Lairson
Scripps Research Inst.
For his research carried out at The University of British Columbia

Luke Lairson was raised in the Georgian Bay region of Ontario and later attended high school in Ottawa. He completed his BSc in biochemistry at the University of Guelph in 2002. During this time he pursued research in the fields of plant physiology, synthetic organic chemistry and enzymology in the laboratories of Bernard Grodzinski, Adrian L. Schwann and A. R. Merrill, respectively. In 2007, under the supervision of Stephen G. Withers, he was awarded a PhD in chemistry from the University of British Columbia. His graduate work focused on understanding the mechanisms of glycosyltransferases and engineering their substrate specificities in order to expand their utility in chemical synthesis. For this work, he was awarded graduate fellowships from NSERC and the Michael Smith Foundation for Health Research. He moved to the Scripps Research Institute in 2007, as a CIHR post doctoral fellow, to conduct research in the laboratory of Peter G. Schultz. His work in the Schultz lab is focused on the identification of molecules that modulate cell surface glycosylation, cancer stem cell fate, and somatic cell reprogramming.

Previous winners of the CSC Boehringer Ingelheim Award  

Nomination Form: submit your nomination package as a PDF

Terms of Reference

This award is presented to a Canadian citizen or landed immigrant whose PhD thesis in the field of organic or bio–organic chemistry was formally accepted by a Canadian university in the 12-month period preceding the nomination deadline of July 2 and whose doctoral research is judged to be of outstanding quality.

Deadline: July 2 of every year

Sponsor: Boehringer Ingelheim (Canada) Ltd.

Award: A framed scroll, $2,000 cash and reasonable travel expenses to present the lecture, if required.

Submit a pdf file of the nomination package to the Awards Manager which contains:

• CSC Nomination Form
• CV of the nominee (maximum 9 pages, single sided, including list of publications)
• A brief synopsis of the doctoral thesis (maximum 10 double-spaced pages)
• Two letters of support from independent experts in the field assessing the significance of the thesis

The recipient will be required to present an award lecture at the Canadian Chemistry Conference and Exhibition.

Membership in the Institute is not a prerequisite for this award.

All nominations will remain in force for three years. Nominators are responsible for keeping the record of the nominee up to date and complete.

The award shall be presented annually unless the Committee considers that no suitable candidate has been nominated.