26-Sep-2002
Press Release

Fraser Wins Lawrence Award

Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham announced today that TIGR's president and director, Claire M. Fraser, Ph.D., will receive the E.O. Lawrence Award for her "contributions to genome analysis technology, its extension to the understanding of microbial diversity, and its application to human pathogens."

September 26, 2002

Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham announced today that TIGR's president and director, Claire M. Fraser, Ph.D., will receive the E.O. Lawrence Award for her "contributions to genome analysis technology, its extension to the understanding of microbial diversity, and its application to human pathogens."

Fraser will receive the award along with six other prominent scientists at a ceremony in Washington, D.C., in October. The Lawrence Award was established in 1959 to honor the memory of the late Dr. Ernest Orlando Lawrence, who invented the cyclotron particle accelerator. Two major Energy Department laboratories, in Berkeley and in Livermore, Calif., are named after Lawrence.

"We are all enriched by the contributions these researchers have made ranging from understanding the genetic code to measuring the expansion of the universe itself," Secretary Abraham said in a statement released today in Washington.

Fraser was honored in the award's Life Science category. Each winner receives a gold medal, a citation and $25,000. The award is given for outstanding contributions in the field of atomic energy, which today has influenced many other fields of science, such as environmental research, materials science and nuclear medicine.

The other winners of this year's Lawrence Award are:

  • C. Jeffrey Brinker, Sandia National Laboratories and the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque
  • Bruce T. Goodwin, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, Calif.
  • Keith O. Hodgson, Stanford University and the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC), Stanford, Calif.
  • Saul Perlmutter, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, Calif.
  • Benjamin D. Santer, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
  • Paul J. Turinsky, North Carolina State University, Raleigh

Fraser led the TIGR teams that sequenced the genomes of Mycoplasma genitalium, the spirochetes Treponema pallidum and Borrelia burgdorfei, and two species of Chlamydia. She is now overseeing several major research projects, including the genomic sequencing of Bacillus anthracis, and is a member of National Research Council committees on countering bioterrorism and on domestic animal genomics. She also has served on review committees of the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health.

During her career, Fraser has published more than 160 articles in scientific journals and books. She edited two volumes in the Receptor Biochemistry and Methodology series on neurotransmitter receptors and has been a reviewer for nine scientific journals, currently serving a second term on the editorial board of The Journal of Biological Chemistry. She is a former editor for Comparative and Microbial Genomics and for the International Encyclopedia of Pharmacology and Therapeutics.

Before becoming TIGR's president in 1998, Fraser was the institute's vice president of research and director of its microbial genomics department. Prior to that, she worked as a researcher at the National Institutes of Health, including three years as Chief of the Section of Molecular Neurobiology at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism. She is a summa cum laude graduate of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and received a Ph.D. in Pharmacology from State University of New York at Buffalo.