Carolyn Bertozzi to give keynote address at medical school graduation ceremony

Winner of the Nobel Prize in chemistry will be the keynote speaker at the Stanford School of Medicine graduation ceremony.

- By Mark Conley

Carolyn Bertozzi

Stanford University professor Carolyn Bertozzi, PhD, a 2022 Nobel laureate in chemistry and a former MacArthur fellow, will be this year’s keynote speaker at the Stanford School of Medicine’s graduation ceremony. 

The ceremony will be held from 1 to 3 p.m. Saturday, June 17, on Alumni Green, next to the Li Ka Shing Center for Learning and Knowledge. No tickets are required.

Bertozzi’s wide-ranging research has focused on both chemistry and biology, with an emphasis on cell surface sugars important to human health and disease. She is the inventor of bioorthogonal chemistry, a class of chemical reactions compatible with living systems that enable molecular imaging and drug targeting.

Bertozzi shared the 2022 Nobel Prize in chemistry with U.S. chemist K. Barry Sharpless, PhD, and Danish chemist Morten P. Meldal, PhD. They earned the prize for their contributions to click chemistry and bioorthogonal chemistry — methods of engineering molecules so they are drawn to one another, which allows chemical experiments in living cells.

She was among the first faculty at Stanford University to join the interdisciplinary institute Sarafan ChEM-H (Chemistry, Engineering and Medicine for Human Health). She is now its Baker Family Director.

Her research group — Bertozzi Group — profiles changes in cell surface glycosylation associated with cancer, inflammation and bacterial infection, using this information to develop new diagnostic and therapeutic approaches, most recently in immuno-oncology.

Bertozzi, a native of Lexington, Massachusetts, who joined Stanford University in 2015, completed her undergraduate degree in chemistry at Harvard University and her PhD at UC Berkeley, focusing on the chemical synthesis of oligosaccharide analogs.

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About Stanford Medicine

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