University of Colorado at Boulder Professor Norman Pace has been awarded the 2007 Abbott-American Society for Microbiology Lifetime Achievement Award, the society's highest honor, for his groundbreaking research in microbial ecology.
A professor in the molecular, cellular and developmental biology department, Pace pioneered the use of molecular genetic techniques to rapidly detect, identify and classify microbe species using nucleic acid technology. "Today's discoveries and advancements in microbiology are directly built upon the foundations established by this influential microbiologist," according to an ASM statement.
New perspectives on microbial diversity, the rapid development of molecular ecology techniques and the recent use of genomic methods in microbial ecology can all be directly traced to Pace's research efforts, according to the ASM. An expert on ribonucleic acids, or RNA, he is a leading authority on extreme life in deep-sea thermal vents and has applied his research group's findings to challenges ranging from studies of human inflammatory diseases to potential life on other planets.
The Abbott-ASM Lifetime Achievement Award will be presented to Pace at the 107th general meeting of the ASM being held May 21 to May 25 in Toronto.
A member of the prestigious National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Microbiology, Pace received a $500,000 MacArthur Fellowship -- popularly known as a "genius grant" -- in 2001 for his research. That same year he was awarded the Selman Waxman Award from the National Academy of Sciences, considered the nation's highest award in microbiology.
Pace received his bachelor's degree from Indiana University and his doctorate from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He has held faculty positions at CU's Health Sciences Center (1969-1984), Indiana University (1984-1996), the University of California, Berkeley (1996 to 1999) and CU-Boulder from 1999 to the present.
He has published more than 200 research articles and his work has taken him 14,000 feet under the sea in a research submarine and to Yellowstone National Park, discovering many thousands of new microbial species in the process. Pace also is a co-investigator at CU's Center for Astrobiology, funded by NASA.