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For immediate release:
April 19, 2005

Carnegie Mellon Mechanical Engineer Wins Prestigious Beckman Young Investigator Award

Phil LeDuc

PITTSBURGH—Carnegie Mellon University's Phil LeDuc has won the prestigious Beckman Foundation Young Investigator's Award for leading edge biomedical engineering research.

"I was both delighted and surprised with this recent recognition," said LeDuc, an assistant professor in Mechanical Engineering. He joins an elite class of 24 Beckman awardees selected in 2005 for opening up new avenues of research in the chemical and life sciences.

LeDuc is building new tools that merge engineering technology with both scientific and commercial applications, which include developing bionanotechnology to investigate cell responses, diagnostic tools to detect cancer and computational methods to understand molecular behavior. LeDuc, who sees the human cell as a bustling metropolis with all the parts necessary to the survival of life in an ever-changing world, is using his $264,000 Beckman award to study the astonishing diversity in the mechanics, structure and function of the cell.

These technologies are useful to help physicians and scientists understand and develop more accurate targets in drug development for medical treatment.

"We are extremely impressed with this award. It reflects on the breadth of talent and innovative skills of Professor LeDuc," said Pradeep K. Khosla, dean of Carnegie Mellon's College of Engineering and co-founder of Carnegie Mellon CyLab.

LeDuc earned his B.S. and M.S. in mechanical engineering at North Carolina State University in 1990 and 1995, respectively. He obtained his Ph.D. at The Johns Hopkins University.

Prior to coming to Carnegie Mellon in 2002, LeDuc was a fellow at Harvard Medical School and Children's Hospital. He also worked as a research associate at the Singapore-based Center for Information Enhanced Medicine.

His other honors include winning a National Science Foundation Career Award and being named co-founder and head of missionary work in Ghana, Africa.

The Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation is an independent, nonprofit foundation originally established in September 1977 for the purpose of supporting basic scientific research in the fields of chemistry, biochemistry and medicine.