With approval last month by the University of Colorado Board of Regents, the University of Colorado announced Karolin Luger as a newly designated distinguished professor. Being named a distinguished professor is the highest honor bestowed upon faculty across the system's four campuses.

Luger is joined by Jean Kutner of the CU Anschutz Medical Campus. The two were officially appointed the distintion at the regents' Feb. 9–10 meeting. 

The pair is now part of the 2022 cohort of distinguished professors, including four CU Boulder faculty members who were announced in November of 2022: Robert Davis, Kira Hall, Rebecca Maloy and Leysia Palen. Also designated at that time were Dr. Ronald Sokol from the CU Anschutz Medical Campus and Carlos Paz de Araujo and Dorothea Olkowski from the University of Colorado Colorado Springs campus. 

Karolin Luger

Luger, the Jennie Smoly Caruthers Endowed Chair of Biochemistry, Department of Biochemistry, is an internationally recognized researcher who joined the CU Boulder faculty in 2015.  

She has received many honors, including a 2005 appointment to the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and elections to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2017) and the National Academy of Sciences (2018). 

Karolin Luger specializes in cell signaling, molecular biophysics, nucleic acids, proteins and enzymology, and structural biology. Her work has yielded insights into the impact of nucleosomes on gene transcription, DNA replication and repair and other DNA-templated processes. 

Luger recently answered five questions about the nature of her work, what she is most proud of in her time at CU Boulder and her initial reaction to being named as a distinguished professor.

Formal recognition

The nine-member cohort is expected to be formally recognized later this spring. They bring the total number of CU distinguished professors, since the title's inception in 1977, to 138.