Brenner, who is also an adjunct professor of biology at the University of California, San Diego, will receive the prestigious $25,000 award on April 1 at a dinner on the UCSD campus honoring his lifetime achievements as a scientist.

"Sydney has been a true force of nature in developing new fields of science and in contributing unique and visionary ideas to many disciplines," said Eduardo R. Macagno, Dean of the Division of Biological Sciences at UCSD, who will present the award. "He is a unique individual, more creative than anyone I have ever known. Being able to sit down and have a talk with Sydney is one of the great pleasures of being one of his colleagues."

"We are honored to acknowledge Dr. Brenner's extraordinary contributions to science and humanity with the UCSD/Merck Life Sciences Achievement Award," said Donald Nicholson, Ph.D, vice president and site head of Merck Research Laboratories in San Diego, which provided $50,000 for the award and for a symposium at UCSD that will bring together the world's experts on RNA biology. "The passion and purpose Dr. Brenner has brought to his work for more than a half century serve as inspiration for the next generation of scientists."

The previous and only other recipient of the UCSD/Merck Life Sciences Achievement Award, established two years ago by Macagno, was the late Francis Crick, a Nobel laureate also from the Salk Institute who co-discovered the structure of DNA. Crick received the first UCSD/Merck Life Sciences Achievement Award in 2003, the year before his death last July.

The award to Brenner will culminate the all-day scientific symposium at UCSD, which will bring to the campus hundreds of scientists working on RNA biology, including two other Nob
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Contact: Kim McDonald
kmcdonald@ucsd.edu
858 534-7572
University of California - San Diego
31-Mar-2005