Research

Molecular biologist Michael Smerdon has won a 10-year $3.58 million MERIT award from the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) so that he can continue his research on repairing DNA. Smerdon was the only scientist to receive the award this year and is the 14th recipient since the NIEHS program began in 1966.

For more than 20 years, Smerdon has been doing groundbreaking work on how DNA damage, caused by chemicals and UV light, is repaired. He was among the first investigators to focus on the role that chromatin structure—the way DNA is folded and packaged within each cell—plays in the DNA repair process.

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