Dr. Lara Gamble, NESAC/BIO associate director and UW research associate professor will be the 2014 recipient of the Peter M. A. Sherwood Mid-Career Professional Award from the AVS Applied Surface Science Division (ASSD). According to AVS, the award "recognizes achievements leading to exceptional progress in research and development made by professionals in their mid-career in an area of interest to the ASSD." Award recipients have between approximately 10 to 20 years' experience in a field of interest to the AVS ASSD and demonstrate sustained and outstanding scientific and technical contributions in research, engineering, technical advancement or academic education, and show potential for further advancement of that field. Gamble has been a member of the organization since the 1990s, when she entered graduate school, and says an AVS conference was one of the first places she presented her research.
Gamble received her Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from the University of Washington in 1996. As the NESAC/BIO associate director she is working to develop and apply new surface analysis technologies for biomedical research and expand the frontiers of biomedical surface analysis.
"By combining her expertise in instrumentation, experimental design and insightful data interpretation Professor Gamble has made significant contributions to the development and application surface analysis methods for obtaining detailed information about the structure of peptides, proteins and DNA on surfaces," according to David Castner, director of NESAC/BIO. "She also has been extremely active in service activities to AVS and other professional societies, developing extensive research collaborations and mentoring students, post-docs and staff."
Gamble was the first researcher to use an advanced spectroscopy technique, called NEXAFS, to determine the orientation of adsorbed peptides and proteins. The multi-technique approach she used to characterize immobilized DNA provided an unprecedented level of detail and understanding about the structure and reactivity of immobilized DNA. And, in recent years, she has focused on developing data acquisition and analysis methodology for characterizing biological cells and tissue sections, with a particular emphasis on the study of human breast cancer tissue sections from clinical trials.
As a winner of the Sherwood Award, Gamble will receive a cash grant and will give a featured talk at the AVS International Symposium In November 2014,where she will be formally presented the award by her peers. Read more about the ASSD and award at the AVS website.