The First Woman to Win the Tetrahedron Prize for Creativity in Organic Chemistry

Laura Kiessling, the Novartis Professor of Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has been selected to receive the 2017 Tetrahedron Prize for Creativity in Organic Chemistry. She will be the first woman to receive the award since its founding in 1980. Dr. Kiessling will be honored at the 2018 annual meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston next summer.

Profssor Kiessling’s interdisciplinary research interests focus on elucidating and exploiting the mechanisms of cell surface recognition processes, especially those involving protein-glycan interactions.

“Hearing about the Tetrahedron Prize was both surprising and special,” Dr. Kiessling said. “The previous winners are a list of those who have inspired me, including my mentors. This honor is also important to me as it recognizes a change in the diversity of researchers in organic and bioorganic chemistry, and diversifying our field is critical for its vitality.”

Professor Kiessling joined the MIT faculty this year after teaching at the University of Wisconsin-Madison since 1991. She is a graduate of MIT and holds a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from Yale University.