Herzon named Packard Fellow

Seth B. Herzon, assistant professor of chemistry, has been named a 2011 Packard Fellow.  The fellowship will support his work in synthetic methods development and natural products synthesis.

The Packard Fellowship was established in 1988 by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation. Support is directed toward early career scientists in the physical sciences and engineering. Faculty are nominated by the presidents of 50 universities, and each year a panel of scientists and engineers evaluate and select 16 fellows from the candidates 16 fellows annually. The fellowships provide individual grants of $875,000 over five years.

Herzon’s laboratory focuses on two areas of research. The first involves natural products synthesis, whereby complex molecules produced in nature are recreated in the laboratory. The second area of research focuses on organometallic chemistry and the development of new catalytic reactions.

“Funding from the Packard foundation will allow us to push forward into a new area of research and begin to address challenging problems in catalysis,” Herzon says.

Herzon’s other honors include the Searle Scholar Award, the Research Scholar Award from the American Cancer Society, the Synthesis/Synlett Journal Award, and the Eli Lilly New Faculty Award.  He has been an Assistant Professor in the Chemistry department since 2008.