Two faculty win Shaw Scientist awards

The Greater Milwaukee Foundation has honored two UW–Madison scientists with the Foundation’s 2004 Shaw Scientist Award.

Helen E. Blackwell, assistant professor in the Department of Chemistry, and Karen M. Wassarman, assistant professor in the Department of Bacteriology, were selected from among eight finalists nominated by UW-Milwaukee and UW–Madison for the annual award.

The $200,000 Shaw Award is unrestricted, allowing scientists to use it to pursue highly speculative basic research that is the backbone of scientific discovery.

“Mrs. Shaw was passionate about funding scientific breakthroughs not buildings. We could conceive of no better way to help realize her dream than by supporting the most promising young scientists with this award,” Douglas M. Jansson, president of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, says in reference to Dorothy Shaw, whose bequest funds the awards.

Blackwell and her research team are working at the crossroads of chemistry and biology designing new chemical tools to ask important questions in bacteriology and plant biology. In particular, Blackwell is interested in the development of microwave-assisted organic reactions as a general method to expedite small molecule synthesis. Her team is using this new technique to rapidly design and evaluate molecules that interfere with bacterial communication pathways.

The ability of bacteria to communicate among themselves and function as a group is crucial in the development of infectious disease in both plants and animals. Blackwell’s methods to intercept these “conversations” hold promise for the development of new generation antimicrobial therapies and general strategies for biocontrol.

Wassarman and her team are studying small RNAs (sRNAs) in bacteria. This class of molecules, an exciting and newly expanding field of study in biology, is critical to the cell’s ability to respond to environmental factors, to enable their long term survival under harsh, sometimes extreme conditions encountered in their natural environments. Understanding the flexibility of how these bacteria normally survive these traumas will contribute to efforts aimed at controlling the spread of unwanted microbial growth and infection.

The Greater Milwaukee Foundation created the Shaw Scientist Award in 1982 with a bequest from Dorothy Shaw, widow of James D. Shaw, a prominent Milwaukee attorney. Shaw’s $4.2 million gift endowed the James D. Shaw and Dorothy Shaw Fund within the foundation. She directed that the fund be used to advance research in the fields of biochemistry, biological science and cancer research at UW–Madison and UW-Milwaukee. The award is one of many efforts in keeping with her directive that the fund supports.

A panel of five scientists from major research institutions throughout the U.S., including Duke, Vanderbilt and the University of Minnesota, select the Shaw Award recipients. Owen W. Griffith, a professor in the Medical College of Wisconsin’s Department of Biochemistry, chairs the committee.

Over more than two decades, the Shaw Scientist Award has provided nearly $9 million to 48 scientists at UW–Madison and UW-Milwaukee.

The Greater Milwaukee Foundation is a family of individual charitable funds, each created by donors to serve the local charitable causes of their choice. Grants from these funds serve people throughout Milwaukee, Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington counties and beyond. Started in 1915, the Foundation is one of the oldest and largest community foundations in the United States.