Pew Charitable Trusts honors IU Bloomington cell biologist Joseph Pomerening
Joseph Pomerening, a cell biologist at Indiana University Bloomington, is a 2009 Pew Scholar in the Biomedical Sciences, the Pew Charitable Trusts announced June 16, 2009.
The honor is accompanied by a four-year, $240,000 award to support research and is reserved for early career scientists. Each awardee's institution must be invited to submit nominations, and as a result, the list of institutions represented by Pew Scholars classes typically enumerates the best science programs in the nation.
"Not only does the program provide extraordinary scientists with the resources to carry out significant research early in their careers, it also offers them the opportunity to exchange ideas and foster relationships during the annual meetings and various networking activities," said Rebecca W. Rimel, president and CEO of The Pew Charitable Trusts. "These gatherings have often led to collaborations that have resulted in significant scientific progress."
Pomerening joined the IU Bloomington Biology Department in 2007 as an assistant professor. He studies how specific enzyme systems that control cell growth and division are regulated. Pomerening's research takes advantage of single-cell approaches along with cell sorting and live cell imaging of mammalian cells, as well as biochemical studies using Xenopus laevis egg extracts and embryos.
He is specifically investigating the role of cyclin-dependent kinases, proteins that modify other proteins to alter their expression and that allow for dynamic changes that ultimately direct the cell to complete the complex and elegant process of division.