David Kilper
d'Avignon, director the nuclear magnetic resonance facility at Washington University in St. Louis with Xia Ge, a postdoctoral research associate in chemistry.
Washington University in St. Louis chemist D André d’Avignon, who manages the university’s high-resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) facility, has been named the winner of 2013 Saint Louis Award.
The Saint Louis Award, sponsored by the Monsanto Company and administered by the Saint Louis section of the American Chemical Society, is presented to an individual who has made outstanding contributions to the profession of chemistry and demonstrated potential to further the advancement of the chemical profession.
Colleagues writing in support of d’Avignon’s nomination stressed his remarkable commitment and contributions to research and teaching. One wrote:
André’s policy has always been that the Facility is “available 24 hours per day, 365 days per year.” I cannot count the number of Saturdays at 8 am, or Sundays at 10 pm, that I or my students have sat with him at the spectrometer trying to uncover the best pulse sequence or decoupling parameter to uncover the secrets held by our biospecimens. … His intellectual gifts and sheer grit serve as a central node in a remarkably collaborative and perpetually growing network.
Another nominator stated:
In a scientific professional life that has extended over fifty years, I have had numerous collaborators on every level from undergraduate neophyte to professorial sage. Yet, in only two other cases can I say that the sheer pleasure of working together matched that of working with André. … A younger colleague once said to me about him: “I wonder when he sleeps.” I wonder too.After receiving his BA from State University of New York at Plattsburgh and his PhD from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, d’Avignon worked for four years at American Cyanamid in Stamford, CT. Washington University hired him in 1984 to help develop the Chemistry Department’s new NMR Facility, which opened in 1985 under his direction.
The NMR Facility now houses seven modern spectrometers, has over 100 active users, and provides services to more than 40 research groups from 14 different departments at Washington University alone. In addition to his work with academic chemists, d’Avignon has coordinated and directed NMR Facility research in support of corporate chemistry laboratories, and has also participated in numerous projects in collaboration with the Saint Louis Food and Drug Administration.
Currently, d’Avignon is collaborating in research that uses NMR to study: diet-mediated heart metabolism; mechanisms of glyphosate (Roundup®) resistance in weedy and invasive plant species; plant metabolic pathways; oxidative stress in red blood cells; and bacteria as a model parasite for screening anti-malarial drug candidates.
This release is based on one written by Eric Ressner of the St. Louis Section of the American Chemical Society.