LI scientists win Presidential Early Career Award

Two Long Island scientists, pursuing unrelated areas of brain research, are among 85 investigators named by President Barack Obama as recipients of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers.

Jacob Hooker, 30, an assistant chemist at Brookhaven National Laboratory, was chosen for research on new isotopes to explore brain regions that have eluded conventional tools.

Physician-scientist Dr. Alfredo Fontanini, 39, of Stony Brook University, won for studies that shed light on how the brain processes the tastes of foods and the emotions elicited by these sensations.

Hooker and Fontanini will attend a Dec. 13 awards dinner at the White House, at which they will meet the president.

Both scientists said Friday the brain is a 3-pound universe made up of billions of nerve cells - neurons - capable of infinite connections. Such complexity, they say, means much of the brain remains unexplored.

"It's incredibly exciting to win this award," said Hooker, also director of radiochemistry at the Harvard University's Martinos Center for biomedical imaging in Boston. He divides his time between Long Island and Boston.

"I am an organic chemist, trained in the interface between chemistry and biology," added Hooker, who explained his investigations have allowed him to create molecules that when administered to animals allowed him and his team to view a variety of vital receptors in the brain. Think of receptors as locks into which only specific keys fit. Dopamine, for example, unlocks the dopamine receptor.

Hooker and colleagues are exploring receptors that have been theorized, but not yet seen. His custom-designed, radioactive molecules help light up never-before-seen receptors in the brain. "The science is what wakes me up every morning," Hooker said.

Fontanini is examining why tastes prompt certain emotions. He has worked solely with animals, such as his colony of rats that lick their chops when given sugar-water but grimace when scientists offer something bitter or sour. Fontanini plans to progress to human studies.

"You are very limited in what you can ask a rat," said Fontanini, whose work will help scientists better understand obesity and other conditions involving the intersection between taste and emotions. "I am very invested in tastes and understanding more and more about the psychological component," he said.

The presidential awards are the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on science and engineering professionals in the early stages of their research careers.

"These Presidential awards recognize that one of the responsibilities - indeed, one of the defining features - of great scientists and engineers is that they put their knowledge and experience to work for others," said Rick Weiss, spokesman for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.

Weiss said the awards embody the priority the government places on the nation's leadership in science and engineering.