Appointed Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator

In 2000, Carolyn Bertozzi was appointed as an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI), one of the most prestigious and well-funded research appointments available to biomedical scientists in the United States.

HHMI Investigators are selected through a highly competitive process that identifies scientists poised to make transformative discoveries, providing them with long-term, flexible funding rather than short-term grants tied to specific projects. This appointment allowed Bertozzi's laboratory, then at the University of California, Berkeley, to pursue high-risk, high-reward research into the emerging field of bioorthogonal chemistry without the constraints of traditional grant cycles.

The HHMI appointment came at a pivotal moment in her career, shortly after she began coining and developing the concept of bioorthogonal reactions—chemical reactions that could occur inside living cells and organisms without interfering with native biological processes. This funding and institutional support proved critical to the explosive growth of her research program over the following decade, contributions that ultimately led to a Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2022.

Bertozzi held her HHMI Investigator position continuously from 2000, reflecting the sustained recognition of her research program's importance by one of the most selective biomedical research funders in the world.