Amie Boal named Nicholas and Gelsa Pelick Family Chair in Science
Amie Boal, professor of chemistry and of biochemistry and molecular biology, has been named the Nicholas and Gelsa Pelick Family Chair in Science. The purpose of the endowed faculty chair is to provide an outstanding biochemist in the Department of Chemistry or the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology with the resources needed to continue and further their contributions to research, teaching, and public service.
“I am extremely pleased that we can recognize Amie’s accomplishments and many contributions to Penn State with this well-deserved appointment,” said Mary Beth Williams, acting dean of the Eberly College of Science, James and Alvina Balog Faculty Fellow in Science, and professor of chemistry. “Amie was chosen for her exceptional research, teaching, and service to the Department of Chemistry and the Eberly College of Science. She is an integral part of the college’s commitment to excellence and I’m certain that will continue with this new appointment.”
The endowed chair was established through a gift from Nicholas Pelick and his wife Gelsa. Nicholas earned a bachelor’s degree in agricultural and biological chemistry in 1960 and a master’s degree in biochemistry in 1964, both at Penn State. In 1966, he partnered with Walter Supina to form Supelco in Bellefonte, PA, which developed and produced analytical products for gas chromatography and lipid biochemicals for medical research and standardization.
Nicholas maintained an active role in supporting Penn State and the Eberly College of Science throughout his life. He served as an emeritus director on the Penn State Research Foundation Board; as a presidential counselor, advising the University on philanthropic issues; as chair of the college’s component of the Grand Destiny fundraising campaign; and as president of the college’s Alumni Society Board. Nicholas received the A. Richard Baldwin Distinguished Service Award in 1988 and recognition as a past president from the American Oil Chemists’ Society in 1997. He was also recognized with a Penn State Alumni Fellow award in 1991 and Distinguished Alumni Award in 2015. Nicholas passed away at the age of 85 in 2018.
“I am truly delighted to receive this recognition and support for my research group,” Boal said. “The resources associated with the appointment will be critical in allowing me to expand the size of my research group and move into new areas of science. As an example, we recently became interested in using cryo-electron microscopy to solve structures of systems we target that operate as part of protein-protein complexes or have dynamic properties that are not suitable for our analysis by other methods. We have excellent resources for these experiments at Penn State, but collection of data can be expensive.”
Boal and her research group study the structural differences between members of large metalloenzyme superfamilies that share common features but promote different reactions or use distinct cofactors. Their objectives include identifying the key outcome-dictating structural characteristics of a given catalyst, reprogramming it for new functions using insight from its structure, and understanding the adaptive advantages in choice of metallocofactor or assembly pathway. The group characterizes stable reactant and product complexes to answer these questions, with a focus on development and implementation of crystallographic and other structural methods to study metalloenzyme reaction intermediates.
Boal’s previous awards and honors include the Priestley Prize for outstanding teaching in Chemistry in 2022, International Society for Biological Inorganic Chemistry (SBIC) Early Career Award in 2022, the C.I. Noll Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2020, the American Chemical Society Pfizer Award in Enzyme Chemistry in 2020, and being named a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholars in 2018 by the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation. She was awarded a Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award for Early Stage Investigators at the National Institutes of Health, in 2016. Boal was also named a Searle Scholar in 2014, a program that recognizes exceptional young faculty members and supports independent research in medicine, chemistry, and the biological sciences.
Prior to joining the faculty at Penn State in 2013, Boal was a postdoctoral scholar at Northwestern University. She earned a doctoral degree at the California Institute of Technology and a bachelor's degree at Pomona College.