Charles Porter Award

Kristien Mortelmans, Ph.D., Senior Microbiologist in SRI's Biosciences Division, received the 2002 Charles Porter Award for outstanding contributions to the Society for Industrial Microbiology (SIM). The award was presented at the annual meeting of the Society in Philadelphia in August.

The Charles Porter Award recognizes individuals who have an outstanding record of sustained service to the Society for a period of seven or more years and who have been active members for ten or more years. The Society is a nonprofit professional association dedicated to the advancement of microbiological sciences, especially as they apply to industrial products, biotechnology, materials, and processes .

Dr. Mortelmans has been active in the Society since 1984 and was Editor-in-Chief of SIM News, the Society's newsmagazine, from 1992 through 2002, when she became the Chair of the Publications Committee. She served as a Director from 1995 to 1998, and then President-Elect, President, and Past-President from 1999 through 2002.

Dr. Mortelmans' current research interests include novel antibiotics, mechanisms of bacterial pathogenicity, role of the human gut flora in human health, and microbial bioenergy production. As part of her doctoral research at Stanford University, she isolated the mutagenesis-enhancing plasmid pKM101 which has, since 1975, played a crucial role in enhancing the sensitivity of the bacterial Ames Salmonella mutagenicity assay that is used on a worldwide basis for the detection of chemical mutagens. She is also a recognized researcher in the field of environmental, medical, and industrial microbiology.