FULLERTON : CSUF Professor Gets Chemistry Award

Cal State Fullerton biochemist Maria C. Linder has won the American Chemical Society’s annual award for research conducted with students at an undergraduate college or university.

Linder, a professor of chemistry and biochemistry at the Fullerton campus for the past 15 years, was recognized for her work in understanding how trace elements such as copper and iron function in the human body.

Over the years, Linder has been awarded $1.25 million in research grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the American Heart Assn. She is the author of two textbooks: “Nutritional Biochemistry and Metabolism” and “The Biochemistry of Copper.” She has also written or co-written 48 published articles or scientific papers, including 13 with Fullerton undergraduate students.

Linder called the chemical society award “a great honor” because it “recognizes one of the strengths of our institution--students in research, particularly undergraduates, at the same time we are working on the cutting edge of research.”

In praising Linder’s work, Glenn M. Nagel, chairman of the chemistry and biochemistry department at Cal State Fullerton, said her laboratory work has been the key in documenting “a series of changes in the way copper is handled by the body when cancer is present.”

Recognition from the American Chemical Society is one more accolade that proves Linder is a “world-class scholar and scientist,” Nagel added.

Linder, who lives in Burbank and is on a one-year leave to continue her research and writing activities, was named Fullerton’s outstanding professor of the year in 1985.

She came to Cal State Fullerton in 1977 from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where she was an assistant professor. She has a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Harvard and has done postdoctoral work at both Harvard and MIT.