COLLEGE STATION - Texas A&M University Chemistry Professor Dr. Kevin Burgess has been appointed to the Rachal Professorship in Chemistry, announced Dr. H. Joseph Newton, dean of Texas A&M's College of Science.
The professorship recently was endowed with a gift from the Ed Rachal Foundation of Corpus Christi in combination with contributions from other donors. Endowment proceeds will support Burgess' research in organic syntheses, which boasts promising implications for medicinal chemistry and biotechnology.
"Professor Burgess' appointment is a particularly fitting tribute to his internationally recognized excellence in synthetic organic chemistry", said Dr. Emile A. Schweikert, professor and head of the Department of Chemistry.
A member of the A&M faculty since 1992, Burgess is a Sloan Research Fellow and a past recipient of a National Institutes of Health Research Career Development Award. He and his A&M research group are studying ways to make chemistry more efficient, particularly in the areas of protein-protein interactions, high-throughput DNA and RNA sequencing, and catalyst discovery and optimization.
Prior to coming to A&M, Burgess was an assistant professor at Rice University. He received his doctorate from the University of Cambridge, where he was also a research fellow, and completed his postdoctoral research at the University of Wisconsin.
The Ed Rachal Foundation was created by an endowment from Ed Rachal's will to benefit charitable, scientific, literary or educational purposes within the State of Texas.
Story by: Shana K. Hutchins, (979) 862-1237 or shutchins@science.tamu.edu