The 2006 Nobel Committee for Chemistry recognized BYU alumnus Kenneth D. Westover (BS ’99) as a contributor to the Nobel Prize–winning chemistry research into how genetic information is copied from DNA to RNA.
Westover has worked in a Stanford University lab under 2006 Nobel Prize–winner Roger Kornberg, for seven years. Westover did his doctoral research in Kornberg’s lab and received a PhD in 2005. “It was my incredibly good fortune to join him at a time when the effort was yielding some important results,” Westover says.
BYU also has close ties with Mohammad Yunus, winner of the 2006 Nobel Peace Prize for his work to alleviate poverty through microcredit. The relationship formed in the mid-1990s, when organizational leadership professor Warner P. Woodworth (BS ’67) took a group of students to hear Yunus speak. Since then, more than a dozen BYU students have been interns with the Grameen Bank, Yunus’ organization. BYU awarded Yunus an honorary doctorate in 1998.
