Peter Novick, Ph.D., whose groundbreaking work in the field of cell biology has contributed to a novel understanding of internal cellular transportation systems, has been named the George E. Palade Endowed Chair of Cellular and Molecular Medicine at the UC San Diego School of Medicine. Novick joins UC San Diego from Yale University, where he was a professor in the Department of Cell Biology at the School of Medicine for more than 20 years. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

The George E. Palade Endowed Chair was established in 2006 to recognize UCSD School of Medicine’s first Dean for Scientific Affairs, Nobel Laureate George Palade, M.D., who is considered to be the father of modern cell biology. Palade retired in 2001 at the age of 88 and remained an advisor to the Vice Chancellor for Health Sciences and Dean of the UCSD School of Medicine for some years. Sadly, Dr. Palade died on October 7 at age 95 after a long illness, shortly after Novick’s appointment was announced.

Novick was selected because he exemplified the characteristics that George Palade manifested throughout his scientific career – outstanding research accomplishments, high research standards and impeccable integrity.

“I am tremendously excited to be back in the UC system since I started my career at UC Berkeley as graduate student,” said Novick. “It is a particularly thrilling honor to be appointed as the George Palade Chair. During my graduate training and formative years as a junior faculty member at Yale, George was always my hero and keenly insightful advisor. He started our field of membrane traffic and challenged us all to bring the field to the advanced level of mechanistic detail that it has since attained.”

Novick’s research combines genetics and cell biology in yeast to investigate mechanisms that regulate membrane trafficking along the secretory pathway, a series of steps used to move proteins out of a cell. Membrane traffic is required for many essential functions, and its regulation is directly relevant to a broad range of human diseases including cancer, diabetes and neural degeneration.

He discovered the first Rab protein, called Sec4 (a member of a family of proteins involved in membrane trafficking) in yeast and demonstrated that this protein is essential for fusing secretory vesicles – structures that store and transport cellular products – with the cell membrane. This and other notable accomplishments in the field of membrane trafficking have had broad implications for cell biology, biochemistry and genetics. In future years, Novick’s laboratory will address the mechanisms by which different stages of intracellular membrane traffic are coordinated and regulated.

The George E. Palade Endowed Chair was established by friends and colleagues and the Richard Lounsbery Foundation. The chair is supported by the Margaret Shaw Roberts Fund created by a bequest from the Joseph N. Roberts Estate.

Seth J. Field, M.D., Assistant Professor of Medicine at UC San Diego School of Medicine, has received a New Innovator Award, intended to accelerate the translation of risky science and research to improvements in human health, from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Karen Christman, Assistant Professor of Bioengineering at the UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, was also a recipient. Each will receive five-year, $1.5 million grants to support their work.

Field, who joined the School of Medicine in 2005, will develop a multi-pronged, systematic approach to understanding the function of lipid molecules that transmit signals within cells. Despite the importance of these molecules in diseases ranging from cardiovascular and neurologic disease to diabetes and cancer, little is known about their functions. He plans to study these seven lipid signaling molecules, called phosphoinositides, and their roles in regulating cell growth and death, metabolism, and communication processes within cells.

Field earned his M.D. and Ph.D. degrees in genetics from Harvard University, where he served as an instructor at the Harvard Medical School prior to coming to UC San Diego.

The NIH granted New Innovator Awards to a total of 31 young scientists across the United States. The awards were created in 2007 to support a small number of new investigators who have exceptional creativity and propose bold and highly innovative new research approaches that have the potential to produce a major impact on broad, important problems in biomedical and behavioral research.