Rosalind Kornfeld Award for Lifetime Achievement in Glycobiology

The Rosalind Kornfeld Award for Lifetime Achievement in Glycobiology was established in 2008 to honor Dr. Rosalind Kornfeld’s distinguished scientific career and service to the Society. The Society bestows this prestigious award to scientists who, throughout their professional careers, have made outstanding contributions to Glycobiology.

2025 Awardee - Dr. Karen Colley

 The 2025 Kornfeld award recipient is Dr. Karen Colley. Karen has worked in the field of glycobiology since her undergraduate training in Sal Pizzo’s laboratory at Duke where her first publication was “The standardization of the thiobarbituric acid assay for nonenzymatic glucosylation of human serum albumin” (Ney et al, 1981). She moved to Jacques Baenziger’s lab in 1981 at Washington University in St. Louis for her Ph.D. where she published four first-author papers on the purification and characterization of mammalian lectins.  She completed her Ph.D. in 1987 and moved to UCLA to begin a postdoctoral fellowship with Jim Paulson. She published several papers while in the Paulson lab regarding structure and localization of sialyltransferases, including a highly cited review article (over 1300 citations) that is still being cited today, “Glycosyltransferases: Structure, localization and control of cell type specific glycosylation” (Paulson & Colley, 1989). Karen was offered a position as an Assistant Professor in 1991 at the Department of Biochemistry at the University of Illinois-Chicago, College of Medicine. She rose through the ranks, becoming a full Professor in 2002, Interim Associate Dean for Research in 2005, Associate Dean for Graduate Research and Education in 2007, and Dean of the Graduate College in 2012. She was recently appointed Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs of the University of Illinois Chicago in 2023.

Karen’s group at the University of Illinois Chicago has made major contributions to our understanding of localization and substrate specificity of sialyltransferases. She published a series of papers continuing to define factors that localize ST6Gal1 in the Golgi apparatus (Fenteany et al, 2005). She also began working on the unique substrate specificity of polysialyltransferases (PST/ST8SiaIV and STX/ST8Sia II) for Neural Cell Adhesion Molecule (NCAM). Her lab published numerous papers identifying regions of the NCAM required for polysialylation, ultimately identifying sequences in both the polysialyltransferases and NCAM required for recognition and modification (Thompson et al, 2011, Bhide et al, 2017). Over her career she sustained continuous extramural support to fund her research. Her work led to numerous invitations to speak at universities and international meetings, and she is lead author of the chapter “Cellular Organization of Glycosylation” in the current edition of Essentials in Glycobiology.

As a result of her scientific discoveries, Karen began to be asked to serve the field of Glycobiology, which she has done in spades. She served on several NIH study sections related to review of glycobiology grants (e.g. member of PBC from 1998-2002 and MBPP from 2008-2011, co-Chair of New Investigator MIRA grants and Chair of U01 Glycoscience Common Fund Study Sections in 2016). She has served on the Society for Glycobiology Board of Directors (1998-2006 and 2021-2024) and served as the President of the Society in 2017. She also served as the Chair of the Glycobiology Gordon Conference in 2007. She served on the editorial boards of JBC (2001-2006) and Glycobiology (2007-2021) and has served as the Editor-in-Chief of Glycobiology since 2021.

Karen has been an ardent supporter of the next generation of scientists both through many roles at her home institution as cited above and nationally. Of more immediate impact to the field of glycobiology, almost a decade ago Karen helped inaugurate the first Gordon Research Seminar for Graduate Students and Post-docs at a Glycobiology Gordon Conference, as well as the Trainee Mentoring Satellite Sessions before the annual SFG meetings. And she has continued to participate ever since. Her service to the field has been exemplary!

 The Kornfeld award was established to honor someone with key contributions given over their entire career, both scientifically and in service, to the field of Glycobiology. Karen has clearly done this beautifully.