Lifetime Achievement Award Winners
The following individuals are our TERACHEM 2022 Lifetime Achievement Award Winners. We recognized Dr. Linder and Prof. Abram for their outstanding contributions to their research and leadership in the field of radiometals. They were presented with awards and gave short talks at the symposium.
Dr. Karen E. Linder
For 45 years, Dr. Karen E. Linder played key R&D roles in companies that develop new diagnostic imaging agents. She began her radiopharmaceutical career as a hot lab technician in a time of intense commercial competition to develop the first 99mTc-based heart-and brain-imaging agents. During this time, New England Nuclear (now Lantheus) became NEN, then DuPont and DuPont-Merck. After 6 years of successful bench radio- and inorganic chemistry without formal training in the field, Karen began work on a PhD in Inorganic Chemistry at MIT, under the supervision of Prof. Alan Davison, a pioneer in technetium chemistry.
After her PhD (1986), she continued new product development for the Squibb Institute for Medical Research and Bristol-Myers Squibb, ultimately leading the radiochemistry and analytical chemistry groups and several project teams for Bracco Research USA, as well as serving as Assistant Radiation Safety Officer for this research group, which used up to 52 Curies of 177Lu and 99mTc per year for new product synthesis, formulations research and preclinical in vitro and radiotherapy studies. Most recently, Dr. Linder served as Associate Director of Clinical Science and Medical Affairs for Blue Earth Diagnostics, where she led BED’s active Investigator Initiated Trials (IIT) program, while supporting company-sponsored trials focused on PET imaging of prostate and brain cancers. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for TRIUMF Innovations Inc., the interface between Canada's national particle accelerator laboratory and the business world.
Dr. Linder is an inventor on 42 patents and a co-author on ~50 refereed papers and >80 conference abstracts. The research teams she worked with over the years produced and screened thousands of novel compounds, a few of which progressed to patient trials, and sometimes to clinical and commercial success.
Prof. Ulrich Abram
Professor Ulrich Abram studied chemistry at the University of Leipzig, where he also carried out his dissertation on the fundamental chemistry of technetium. From 1982 to 1991 he worked as a research associate at the Institute for Nuclear Research Rossendorf (today Helmholz Center Dresden Rossendorf, HZDR). In 1994, he participated in the Fourth International Symposium on Technetium in Chemistry and Nuclear Medicine, held in Padua, Italy, and organized by Prof. N. Nicolini, G. Baldoni, and U. Mazzi.
With a Heisenberg fellowship from the German Research Foundation, he did independent research at the University of Tübingen in Professor Strähle's group from 1992 to 1996 and was appointed associate professor in 1997. In 1993, he was honored with the Award of the Topical Symposium on the Behavior and Utilization of Technetium held in Sendai (Japan). In 2000, he moved to Freie Universität Berlin as a full professor at the Institute of Chemistry and Biochemistry, where he served as director from 2008-2012. Until 2018, he was Dean of the Department of Biology, Chemistry, Pharmacy at the Freie Universität Berlin. Ulrich Abram was visiting professor at the Brazilian Universities of Sao Paulo (USP) and Santa Maria (UFSM). His research interests focus on the fundamental and applied chemistry of technetium, rhenium, gold, selenium and tellurium. In addition, his group explores the coordination chemistry of radiometals such as uranium and thorium. In this context, he is developing multidentate ligand systems, multidentate metal complexes as building blocks for supramolecular aggregates, and the organometallic chemistry of various transition metals.
He published approximately 400 research papers in peer-reviewed journals, more than half of them about the chemistry of the elements technetium and rhenium.