Chemistry Professor Thomas E. Smith Wins Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. - Thomas E. Smith, associate professor of chemistry at Williams College, was recently named a national winner of the Henry Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award. Administered by the Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation, the award carries an unrestricted research grant of $60,000.This award recognizes tenure-track faculty in U.S. academic institutions that grant bachelor's or master's degrees in the chemical sciences. Candidates are assessed based on "leadership in original scholarly research of outstanding quality with undergraduates and excellence and dedication in undergraduate studies."
"The competition for the Teacher-Scholar award was strong," says Mark Cardillo, executive director of the Camille & Henry Dreyfus Foundation. Smith was one of only five winners selected from a large pool of nominees from across the United States.
He will use his award to enhance the research and educational development of undergraduate students in his laboratory.
Smith and his lab are researching pyran-based anticancer natural products in order to formulate an efficient general strategy for the asymmetric synthesis of these complex molecular structures.
The molecules he studies include acutiphycin, which inhibits the growth of malignant cells, and tedanolide C, which exhibits potent cytotoxicity against cancer cell lines. Both of these are natural products of marine origin. Like many biologically relevant natural product classes, they also contain chiral pyran-based ring systems (six-membered rings comprising five carbon atoms and one oxygen).
The Smith lab currently includes senior honors candidates Alex Zackheim '09, a chemistry and economics major from Fairfield, Conn.; Cale Weatherly '09, a chemistry and philosophy major from Cincinnati, Ohio; and independent study student Zebulon Levine '11, from Pomfret Center, Conn.
The National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, the American Chemical Society's Petroleum Research Fund, and Pfizer, Inc. have supported his research and his research has appeared in numerous peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Organic Chemistry, Organic Letters, and the Journal of Chemical Education,
Smith received his B.A. from Williams College in 1988 and his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1996. He did his postdoctoral work at Harvard University. He joined the Williams College faculty in 1998.
The Henry Dreyfus Foundation, established in 1946, seeks to advance the sciences of chemistry, chemical engineering, and related sciences as a means of improving human relations and circumstances.
