KU News Release

KU awarded $5 million for Kansas Bioscience Authority ‘Eminent Scholar’

Blake Peterson

TOPEKA — The Kansas Bioscience Authority today announced that Blake Peterson of the University of Kansas is one of its first two Eminent Scholars. The designation carries with it a $5 million, five-year grant from KBA, to be matched by KU.

Peterson joins the KU faculty this semester as a professor in the Department of Medicinal Chemistry, part of KU’s nationally ranked School of Pharmacy. He had been at Penn State since 1998 and will play a key role in KU’s efforts to obtain National Cancer Institute designation as a Comprehensive Cancer Center. His research has led to groundbreaking discoveries in novel drug delivery, particularly with delivery across membrane barriers.

“The bioscience authority is a catalyst for bioscience research, technology transfer and jobs throughout Kansas,” said KU Chancellor Robert Hemenway. “One of the best ways to accomplish that mission is to invest in exceptional researchers who have an entrepreneurial spirit. Dr. Peterson fits that description perfectly.”

At Penn State, Peterson’s research was funded primarily by the National Institutes of Health and the Dreyfus Foundation. His lab included three undergraduate and seven graduate students, several of whom follow him to KU. His research will be housed in the new wing of KU’s Structural Biology Center, now under construction on west campus. That facility is scheduled for completion this summer.

“The Eminent Scholar designation underscores KU’s strengths in basic biosciences research, especially cancer research,” said Hemenway. “Work in this area can result in new discoveries, economic growth and, best of all, better lives for Kansans.”

The 2004 state statute that created the KBA also authorized investment in Eminent Scholars and Rising Star Scholars. The criteria emphasized professional distinction, a high level of research activity and the potential for commercialization of that research.

Peterson, who recently was appointed as a Regents Distinguished Professor, received a bachelor’s degree from the University of Nevada-Reno in 1990 and a doctorate from the University of California-Los Angeles in 1994, both in chemistry. He spent two years as a research assistant at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, from 1992 to 1994, and three years at Harvard University as a Damon Runyon-Walter Winchell Cancer Research Foundation post-doctoral fellow (1995-98). He was an American Cancer Society Research Scholar in 2003 and a Dreyfus Foundation Teacher-Scholar Award recipient in 2004.

KBA’s second Eminent Scholar is Juergen Richt, who will join the faculty at Kansas State University later this year.

More information on KBA is available online.

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