Tuesday, Aug. 31, 2004

WRITER: Phil Williams, 706/542-8501, phil@franklin.uga.edu

SOURCE: Geert-Jan Boons, 706/542-9161, gjboons@ccrc.uga.edu

DR. GEERT-JAN BOONS NAMED FRANKLIN PROFESSOR OF CHEMISTRY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA

ATHENS, Ga. – Dr. Geert-Jan Boons, a professor at the University of Georgia’s Center for Complex Carbohydrate Research (CCRC), has been named Franklin Professor of Chemistry. He joins Drs. Richard LaFleur in classics, Levon Ambartsumian in music, Judith Ortiz Cofer in English and John Morrow in history as Franklin Professors at UGA.

Franklin Professorships were approved by the University System of Georgia Board of Regents in 1980 and established to honor selected faculty in UGA’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences for their length of service, administrative efforts and record of teaching and research. Boons’ nomination is pending approval Board of Regents.

“This is an important recognition of the accomplishments of my research group,” said Boons.

Departments may nominate candidates, the dean’s office may solicit nominations or the honor may be used as part of a recruitment effort at the senior faculty level.

“Geert-Jan Boons is a superb faculty member, and I am delighted to welcome him to the rank of Franklin Professor,” said Dean Garnett S. Stokes of the Franklin College. “He joins a distinguished group of colleagues.”

Boons has contributed significantly to many areas of science, including the development of new and better methods for synthesizing exceptionally complex molecules and the use of the new methods to synthesize and study the properties of complex carbohydrates of increasing size and complexity. Many of the molecules that Boons’ group synthesized are designed to answer important biomedical questions.

A native of The Netherlands, Boons joined UGA in 1997 as a professor in the CCRC and department of chemistry. He received his undergraduate degree in chemistry and his doctoral degree in synthetic carbohydrate chemistry, both from the State University of Leiden in the Netherlands. He served postdoctoral assistantships at Imperial College, London, and the University of Cambridge in the UK. He also served as lecturer and then professor at the University of Birmingham in England before coming to UGA.

Boons has won numerous awards for his work and belongs to a number of professional societies. He is on the editorial boards of the noted journals Carbohydrate Research and Journal of Carbohydrate Chemistry. Since he arrived on campus, he has raised external funds for his research group in excess of $8 million. Currently, the annual external income for his research group is more than $1.5 million

He has lectured all over the world on his research and published more than 100 articles in peer-reviewed journals. He co-authored the book Organic Synthesis with Carbohydrates, which came out in 2000, and edited Carbohydrate Chemistry, which was published in 1997.

The nomination of Boons as Franklin Professor came from his colleagues in the department of chemistry and other units, and was approved by former Franklin College Dean Wyatt Anderson and Provost Arnett Mace.