Helen Blackwell, a professor of chemistry, is one of three nationwide recipients of a 2020 STAR Award from the Research Corporation for Science Advancement (RCSA), an Arizona-based foundation that supports scientific research and academic scientists. The STAR Award is designed to recognize research and education accomplishments by past RSCA Cottrell Scholars. Blackwell received a Cottrell Scholar award in 2005 as an assistant faculty member.
Describing her as “an innovator at the interface of chemistry and biology,” RCSA cited Blackwell’s work in the classroom as well as the laboratory.
Blackwell’s research is focused at the intersection of organic chemistry and microbiology. She studies quorum sensing, chemical signaling pathways in bacteria that allow them to act as a group at high cell densities and activate behaviors that can significantly impact human health, including the initiation of deadly infections. Her lab develops unnatural signals, also known as QS inhibitors, that can intercept bacterial cell-cell signaling and provide new insights into this communication process.
“There is an urgent, global need for new antimicrobial therapies,” says Blackwell. “The ability to intercept bacterial communication networks, and thereby block infection, represents a new therapeutic approach and could be clinically timely.”
Blackwell’s classroom work, meanwhile, has focused on honing the next generation of chemists. Early on in her time here, she reinvented the Chemistry Department’s advanced undergraduate organic chemistry laboratory course. Later on, she founded a new chemical biology path to the Chemistry Ph.D., focused heavily on interdisciplinary thinking and developing student communication skills.
“It’s so important that scientists be able to describe their research, not just to other chemists and biologists, but also to the public,” says Blackwell. “Communicating effectively is a skill scientist’s should seek and hone.”
Blackwell is scheduled to receive her award at a ceremony scheduled for July in Arizona. The award also carries a $5,000 stipend to support ongoing research.