Thomas G. Bernhardt received the 2002 Nat L. Sternberg Thesis Prize, awarded annually to the author of the most outstanding doctoral thesis in prokaryotic molecular genetics.

Bernhardt, a post doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Piet de Boer, associate professor of molecular biology and microbiology at the School of Medicine, was recognized for his thesis research on the mechanism by which small viruses destroy their bacterial hosts. His research, conducted at Texas A&M in the lab of Ryland Young, professor of biochemistry, could help develop new antibiotics to fight viral infections in humans.

The award includes a cash prize as well as an opportunity to give a seminar at the annual Molecular Genetics of Bacteria and Phages meeting in Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island. Bernhardt also received a Damon Runyon Fellowship Award earlier this year, one of 12 given out by the Damon Runyon Cancer Research Foundation.

The three-year grant funds Bernhardt's research in de Boer's lab on cell division. Specifically, Bernhardt and de Boer are trying to determine how bacteria know where on the cell wall they should begin splitting in two.

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