Goldsmith
Randall Goldsmith, assistant professor of chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, has received a 2013 Shaw Scientist Award from the Greater Milwaukee Foundation.
Goldsmith is one of two recipients of the honor, which supports young scientists engaged in groundbreaking research in the fields of biochemistry, biological sciences and cancer research. The other award winner is Rupa Sridharan, assistant professor of cell and regenerative biology.
Each Shaw Scientist receives $200,000 in unrestricted research support.
Goldsmith, whose works to immobilize single molecules to study the way they move and change shape, will apply his Shaw award funding to research on a protein called tau.
Healthy tau proteins physically support the cellular wiring that connects neurons in the brain, but the proteins can break apart and tangle. Tangled tau proteins are found in plaques formed in the brains of Alzheimer's disease sufferers.
Shaw Scientists were first named in 1982 thanks to a $4.3 million bequest from Dorothy Shaw, widow of James Shaw, a prominent Milwaukee attorney. In addition to $2 million in special grants, Shaw's fund has awarded more than $12 million in grants to 63 scientists from UW-Madison and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
The Greater Milwaukee Foundation is a family of more than 1,000 individual charitable funds, each created to serve specific charitable causes. Begun in 1915, it is one of the oldest and largest community foundations in the world.