Dr. George Georgiou from The University of Texas at Austin has been honored with the 2007 Amgen Biochemical Engineering Award for his profound impact on protein therapy and other protein research.
Georgiou, a member of the National Academy of Engineering, will receive the award and deliver a lecture on his research at the Biochemical Engineering IV conference, to be held in mid-July in Quebec City, Canada. This bi-annual award is being given in recognition of Georgiou’s research excellence and leadership in biomedical engineering.
Georgiou has been instrumental in developing commercially relevant technologies for identifying and producing antibodies and other proteins to treat diseases. The professor of chemical engineering, biomedical engineering, and molecular genetics and microbiology has also made fundamental contributions to understanding how cells produce proteins.
His basic research contributions have focused on oxidative protein folding and on protein secretion. The holder of the Cockrell Family Regents Chair in Engineering #9 also identified the biological process all bacteria use to control degradation of a chemical compound essential for making proteins.
His previous honors include the 2005 Food, Pharmaceutical and Bioengineering Award from the American Institute of Chemical Engineers, and the 2003 Marvin J. Johnson Award in Microbial and Biochemical Technology form the BIOT Division of the American Chemical Society. Georgiou also is among the top 2 percent of university faculty holding patents, with more than 34, which have resulted in 14 licensing agreements.
