By Gail Gallessich

Jeffrey W. Bode, assistant professor of chemistry, has been awarded a prestigious Packard Foundation Fellowship for Science and Engineering. He is one of 20 Fellows from among 100 candidates across the country.

The intent of the fellowship program is to provide support for unusually creative researchers early in their careers. The current fellowship is for $625,000, paid over five years, and may be used for any reasonable research expenditure.

Bode has developed a versatile way to connect small snippets of protein, called peptides, that are made of amino acids. The result could lead to a surge in the creation of protein-based drug therapies.

“Our chemical process allows us to synthetically link pieces that would be difficult using other methods, such as chemical synthesis or biotechnological processes,” said Bode. “It is called chemical ligation—being able to specifically link two peptides without using chemical reagents.”

The Packard Foundation Fellowship Advisory Panel invites the presidents of 50 leading research universities to nominate two candidates each from their institutions every year. Candidates must be young faculty members in the first three years of their academic careers.

“Jeff Bode is one of the most innovative and dedicated young scientists in the United States today,” said Alec Wodtke, chair of the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry. “This award will provide valuable support to allow him to explore a fascinating area of very important chemistry that he has personally pioneered, reactions without reagents, catalysts, or byproducts, carried out using water as a solvent. It is this kind of new ‘intelligent chemistry’ that will lead us to enhanced harmony between the environment and the chemical industry.”

Bode also recently found himself and Ben Zhao, assistant professor of computer science, named to a small pool of top young scientific innovators by MIT’s Technology Review magazine.

Over the past 18 years, the Packard Fellowship Program has awarded 383 fellowships, totaling over $220 million, to faculty members at 52 top national universities. The program funds Fellows’ research in a broad range of disciplines, including physics, chemistry, mathematics, biology, astronomy, computer science, earth science, ocean science, and all branches of engineering.