Two dozen faculty and staff of UW-Milwaukee were honored for their distinguished service to the university at the 2024 Employee Excellence Awards ceremony. Chancellor Mark Mone and other speakers praised the winners during a ceremony Wednesday in the ballroom of the UWM Student Union.
Leggy Arnold was awarded the Office of Research Senior Faculty Award.
Leggy Arnold received his PhD in organic chemistry under Nobel laureate Ben Feringa in 2002. He expanded his knowledge in biochemistry and molecular biology at the University of California, San Francisco and together with Kip Guy established the Department of Chemical Biology and Therapeutics at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. At the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Arnold quickly advanced as an expert in the field of vitamin D research and developed potent new anti-tumor agents for ovarian cancer and leukemia. He also developed new drug candidates for asthma, atopic dermatitis and overactive blader syndrome targeting GABA(A) receptor exclusively outside the brain. Together with Douglas Stafford, he established Pantherics Inc. in 2017 and became the director of the Milwaukee Institute for Drug Discovery in 2021. More than a hundred graduate and undergraduate students have been part of the Arnold Group, learning about drug discovery research and continuing on to professional schools, academia and industry.