Frank Millett Appointed to Bruker Analytical Science Professorship

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Frank Millett

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Dean William Schwab has appointed Distinguished Professor Frank Millett as the inaugural holder of the Bruker Analytical Science Professorship, one of two established through Bruker Daltonics and matching funds from the University of Arkansas’ billion-dollar Campaign for the Twenty-First Century.

In 2005, Bruker Daltonics donated to the university some sophisticated mass-spectrometry equipment. This gift was matched by funds from the campaign’s Walton Challenge and used to establish an endowed faculty position to promote the chemistry department’s work in analytical and life science. Eventually, two Bruker Professorships were established.

“Frank Millett is one of the college’s most distinguished and prolific scientists,” said Schwab. “His record for receiving federal funding is outstanding. Just last year, he won an additional $5.4 million from the National Institutes of Health to support the Center for Protein Structure and Function, which he serves as director.”

Since the center was founded in 2000, scientists working there have brought in more than $60 million in grant support.

With the position comes a $750,000 endowed fund. Millett can use proceeds from the Bruker endowment to advance his research, support graduate students, and recruit outstanding faculty to the department.

Millett is serving a two-year term as chair of the National Institutes of Health Macromolecular Structure and Function study section, Center for Scientific Review. The study section is a congressionally chartered group that reviews NIH grant proposals in areas important to human health. His participation will contribute to the national biomedical research effort.

In 2010, he was named a Fellow in the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is the author of 132 publications and the recipient in 1985 of the Burlington Northern Award for Outstanding Research.

He is the recipient of numerous grants from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation. In 2010, he reviewed approximately 200 research proposals for the NIH, NSF and others.

He has been continuously funded by NIH since coming to the University of Arkansas in 1972. He has been working closely with Professor Bill Durham for the past 25 years, and together they developed the ruthenium laser activation method which made it possible to study key steps in mitochondrial electron transfer for the first time. They are currently studying electron transfer in cytochrome oxidase, which reacts with the oxygen we breathe to produce the energy needed for all cellular functions. 

Millett received his doctorate in chemical physics from Columbia University in 1970, and was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology from 1970 to 1972.

Bruker Corporation is a leading provider of high-performance scientific instruments and solutions for molecular and materials research, as well as for industrial and applied analysis.