Professor Keriann Backus has won the annual International Chemical Biology Society (ICBS) Young Chemical Biologist Award.

Backus will deliver her award lecture, titled “Defining the functional cysteinome with multidimensional chemoproteomics,” at the ICBS2024 Annual Conference in Toronto, Canada this October 27-30, 2024.

To recognize and advance the career development of young investigators in chemical biology, the ICBS has established a special session at its annual meeting to showcase up-and-coming chemical biologists through the ICBS Young Chemical Biologist Awards. Awardees are scheduled to speak in the Rising Stars session and will be further recognized for their achievements with a certificate and monetary award of $1,000 USD to each awardee.

Backus is being recognized for her lab’s research focusing on the development and application of innovative chemoproteomic reagents and methods to address compelling questions in biochemistry and chemical biology. Recent efforts from the Backus lab include the chemoproteomic technology development towards the proteome-wide delineation of functional cysteines and multi-omic approaches to pinpoint functional and therapeutically relevant genetic variants.

Backus joined the UCLA faculty in 2018 as an Assistant Professor of Biological Chemistry in the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine, with a joint appointment in the UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry. In 2020, she was appointed to UCLA’s Alexander and Renee Kolin Endowed Professorship of Molecular Biology and Biophysics.  She was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in July 2024.

Backus’ innovative research has earned her numerous awards and recognitions, including the Packard Fellowship, NIH New Innovator Award, Beckman Young Investigator Award, Ono Pharma Foundation Breakthrough Science Initiative Award, and DARPA Young Faculty Award. 

 

Penny Jennings, UCLA Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, penny@chem.ucla.edu.