Voigt named Sloan Fellow

UCSF School of Pharmacy scientist Christopher A. Voigt, PhD is a 2005 recipient of the prestigious Sloan Research Fellowship awarded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

The fellowship supports young scientists who demonstrate exceptional potential for enlightening science with new knowledge. Recipients are often in their first appointments to university faculties. The fellowship is intensely competitive and selected from a national pool of nominees. The US$45,000, two-year grant is largely unrestricted in order to provide the most constructive research support.

Voigt joined the UCSF School of Pharmacy department of pharmaceutical chemistry in 2003 as an assistant professor. His research focuses on the novel use of engineering to decipher biological processes.

"Chris is a highly innovative scientist," says Tom James, PhD, chair of the department of pharmaceutical chemistry, UCSF School of Pharmacy. "His publications illustrate an ability to delve into details of protein structure, while his current research interests tend to analysis of systems—if we consider a bacterial entity as one system and a human as another. His engineering background is most useful for trying to bring order to such a complicated situation."

Voigt was awarded a grant from the National Academy of Sciences to develop a conference to discuss the idea of making microscopic robots out of earth's microbes and sending them to the planet Mars—not to invade, but to engineer and explore. The conference will be held in 2005.

Voigt received his doctorate in biochemistry and molecular biophysics at the California Institute of Technology and his bachelor's degree in chemical engineering, summa cum laude, at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Before joining UCSF, Voigt was a postdoctoral researcher in the department of engineering at the University of California, Berkeley.

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About the School: The UCSF School of Pharmacy aims to solve the most pressing health care problems and strives to ensure that each patient receives the safest, most effective treatments. Our discoveries seed the development of novel therapies, and our researchers consistently lead the nation in NIH funding. The School’s doctor of pharmacy (PharmD) degree program, with its unique emphasis on scientific thinking, prepares students to be critical thinkers and leaders in their field.