David Hershey, as assistant professor in the department of bacteriology at UW-Madison, is one of 11 researchers from institutions across the United States selected for a Beckman Young Investigator Award by the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation in Irvine, CA.  Recipients receive $600,000 over four years.

According to the foundation, the award provides research support to the most promising young faculty members in the early stages of their academic careers in the chemical and life sciences. The goal is to foster the invention of methods, instruments and materials that will open new avenues of research in science.

“We are excited to welcome this new group of young researchers, and to support their outstanding work, amazing creativity, and future potential. Throughout the next four years, our 2023 class of Beckman Young Investigators will be tackling a broad range of problems, from exploring the use of Earth-abundant main group elements to sustainably mediate the chemical reactions that currently rely on precious metals, to developing a new molecular toolkit for identifying and quantifying protein expression in the brain, to fabricating small devices that can produce touch sensation in assistive robots and displays,” says the foundation’s executive director Dr. Anne Hultgren. “We are eager to be part of these incredible projects and to see our researchers’ results.”

The goal of Hershey’s work is to produce a new family of biologically inspired materials from polymers called polysaccharides. Nearly all bacteria produce specialized polysaccharides, and these compounds show tremendous chemical diversity. Hershey’s group plans to use genetic engineering to modify how bacteria produce polysaccharides with the goal of designing new polymers with high chemical precision. They want to use this system to develop valuable materials that can be produced sustainably without the need for costly chemical synthesis.