A Scripps Research chemist who employs enzymes as tools to assemble useful natural compounds has been awarded a prestigious 2021 Sloan Research Fellowship for his work. 

In his Florida-based lab, chemist Hans Renata, PhD, devises ways to make complex compounds found in nature out of more easily obtained building blocks, thus opening the compounds for wider scientific evaluation. 

Renata has successfully made challenging anticancer, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial and other compounds with unprecedented efficiency by building an expanding toolbox of useful enzymes for biosynthesis. 

For his progress, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation announced that Renata is one of 128 early career scientists from 58 institutions nationwide to receive its two-year, $75,000 fellowship. The awards are given annually to recognize scientists in the United States and Canada whose innovation and accomplishments mark them as next-generation scientific leaders, says Adam Falk, president of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. 

“A Sloan Research Fellow is a rising star, plain and simple,” Falk says. “To receive a Fellowship is to be told by the scientific community that your achievements as a young scholar are already driving the research frontier.” 

The Sloan Fellowship represents one of the most prestigious awards available to early career scientists. Many past fellows have gone on to become towering figures in science, the Foundation says. More than 50 past awardees have gone on to win Nobel Prizes. 

Renata says the credit is shared by his lab members and colleagues.