Scientist of the Month: Dr. Carolyn Bertozzi

Carolyn R. Bertozzi is an American chemist who uses chemical synthesis to study biological systems. She came up with the term "bioorthogonal chemistry" to describe how quick, simple chemical reactions called "click reactions" can be used to study living cells. She showed, in particular, that such reactions could be done inside living cells to map molecules and cell function without messing up the everyday chemistry of the cell.

President Joe Biden stands alongside the 2022 U.S. Nobel Prize Winners in Chemistry, Physics, and Economic Sciences, including Dr. Bertozzi.

Dr. Bertozzi was given the 2022 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, which she shared with American chemist K. Barry Sharpless and Danish chemist Morten P. Meldal, for her work in click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry.

Dr. Bertozzi received her bachelor's degree in chemistry from Harvard University in 1988 and her doctorate in the same subject from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1993. From 1993 to 1995, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, San Francisco. In 1996, she became an assistant professor at Berkeley. In 2002, she was promoted to a full professorship in chemistry and molecular and cell biology. She was also a molecular and cellular pharmacology professor at the University of California, San Francisco, from 2000 to 2002. From 2006 to 2015, she was the head of a nanoscience lab at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory called the Molecular Foundry. In 2015, she became a professor of chemistry at Stanford University.