Obama to award Turkish scholar

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

President Barack Obama gestures at a campaign stop in Oakland, Calif., Monday, July 23, 2012. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)

A Turkish cell biologist will receive the ‘U.S. Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers’ with other honorees from President Barack Obama in White House this fall. Fewer than 100 researchers nationwide are chosen each year to receive the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), and this year Dr. Nihal Altan-Bonnet is one of 96 to receive this honor. “Dr. Nihal Altan-Bonnet is a superb cell biologist in the Department of Biological Sciences at Rutgers University, Newark, pursuing in her research an understanding of viral replication in infected cells,” noted Interim Chancellor Philip Yeagle. Altan-Bonnet, a member of the Rutgers-Newark faculty since 2006, is one of two New Jersey researchers, one from Rutgers and one from Princeton, receiving this year’s PECASE award. She has been cited for “research identifying a common lipid blueprint for viral replication and potential panviral therapeutics.” Altan-Bonnet has discovered that there is a common membrane blueprint for the perfect replication platform, shared by multiple different viruses including ones that cause the common cold, poliomyelitis and hepatitis C.