Posted on June 21: McMaster anthropologist wins Young Innovator Award
[img_inline align=”right” src=”http://padnws01.mcmaster.ca/images/Poinar_Hendrik-opt.jpg” caption=”Hendrik Poinar”]Since obtaining his PhD in 1999, McMaster's Hendrik Poinar has achieved a lot.
Aside from international media attention surrounding his research into the genetics of ancient humans, Poinar has had four successful major grant proposals to develop new lab facilities and support his ongoing research. He has authored or co-authored more than 40 articles and book chapters, in leading journals such as Nature and Science. And he has offered undergraduates, research assistants, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows several opportunities to participate in this research.
Now, he has another success to add to that list one that recognizes him for achieving so much so early in his career.
The 35-year-old assistant anthropology professor was named the winner of the 2004 Petro-Canada Young Innovator Award. The award provides $25,000 to a new McMaster professor (less than eight years from a PhD) to encourage creative thinking about how undergraduate students can participate in University research. This is the second year for this award. The 2003 recipient was Imre Szeman, director of McMaster's Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition.
“I am indeed exceptionally honored at receiving this,” Poinar says. “I think the emphasis on undergraduate “interdiscliplanary” training in the lab is the key. My undergraduate education was very much a hands-on experience and that changed the way I looked, and felt about science.”
Poinar hopes other undergraduate students have the same experience. “I want and hope to give that back to a new set of undergraduates from diverse programs (in this case math, health science and anthropology), not only to get hands on experience in a lab setting but almost more importantly, how to think across disciplines. How do and should anthropology students speak to and with mathematicians, and health science students, to answer interesting and pressing biological questions? Can we break down any preconceived barriers between disciplines and encourage our students to cross talk in the hopes that these paths lead to bold new areas of science?”
Poinar joined McMaster in September 2003, after moving from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany.
The funding will support his current research on the analysis of HIV evolution and origins. More specifically, he is working on the transfer of SIV from chimpanzees to humans and thus the origins of HIV. He recently tested archival polio vaccine samples in order to end the debate over the possible iatrogenic origin of HIV. With the same degree of meticulous care shown in his studies of ancient DNA, he will analyze archival samples of HIV collected between 1959 and 980 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This analysis will allow him to piece together the proviral sequence allowing direct comparison to later dated samples. Thus he will be able to provide a more accurate study of the evolution, mutation rate and time of transfer of SIV to humans and the origins of HIV.
