Congratulations to Dr. Brian Strahl, Associate Professor of Biochemistry & Biophysics, for receiving the 2009 Phillip and Ruth Hettleman Award for Outstanding Artistic and Scholarly Achievement.
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Dr. Strahl is one of four recipients of the Phillip and Ruth Hettleman Award this year. The Hettleman Prize includes a $5,000 stipend and recognizes the artistic and scholarly achievements of outstanding junior tenure-track or recently tenured faculty. The award was established by Phillip Hettleman in 1986. Hettleman was an alumnus of UNC who moved to New York to start a Wall Street investment firm, Hettleman & Co.
Currently, Dr. Strahl’s lab studies budding yeast as a model system to address the role of histone methylation in chromatin structure and function, especially as it relates to the process of gene transcription. They use a combination of biochemistry and genetics to study these enzymes, their associated factors, and the mechanisms behind how they regulate DNA-based activities in chromatin.
Dr. Strahl was also recently awarded an EUREKA award from the NIH last year and he is a past recipient of the UNC Jefferson Pilot Fellowship Award and Presidential Early Career Achievement Award.
Learn more about Dr. Strahl’s research: http://www.med.unc.edu/%7Ebstrahl/.