Contact: Kathleen Phillips, 979-845-2872, ka-phillips@tamu.edu
(Photo courtesy of Texas A&M AgriLife)
COLLEGE STATION – Dr. Jim Sacchettini, Texas A&M AgriLife Research scientist and professor in the department of biochemistry and biophysics at Texas A&M University in College Station, has received a Vice Chancellor’s Award in Excellence for research.
The honor was presented Jan. 6 during the Texas A&M AgriLife Conference in College Station.
The Vice Chancellor’s Awards in Excellence were established in 1980. The awards program recognizes the commitment and outstanding contributions of Texas A&M AgriLife faculty and staff throughout Texasand provides an opportunity to celebrate the achievements of those honored.
According to the nomination, Sacchettini “has gained worldwide acclaim and recognition for his research efforts geared toward understanding how enzymes interact with their substrates and how this information can be used to combat important diseases such as tuberculosis and malaria.”
Sacchettini, who came to Texas A&M in 1996, also is holder of the R.J. Wolfe-Welch Foundation Chair in Science. During his 18 years with AgriLife Research, he has obtained numerous grants from national and international funding agencies and is currently the principle or co-principle investigator on seven major research grants from such agencies at the National Institutes of Health and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Because of this, Sacchettini has almost 50 undergraduate and graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and research technicians in his laboratory.
He was cited for his efforts to find cures for infectious “diseases of the poor” — diseases for which there are no cures — and to seeking new and novel ways to combats those illnesses through drug discovery research.
“The approach of the Sacchettini lab is to identify the protein,or enzyme, that is critical to the life cycle of the organism that causes the disease,” according to the nomination. His research has generated more than 280 peer-reviewed publications thus far in his career.
One supporter for his nomination called Sacchettini “fearless, incredibly creative and practical” as “traits that make his research so compelling.”
Sacchettini earned a bachelor’s at St. Louis University and a doctorate from Washington University, both in St. Louis, Missouri. He was an assistant professor at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, New York prior to joining Texas A&M.
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