The Popják Scholar Award was established in the UCLA Atherosclerosis Research Unit to honor George Joseph Popják, MD, DSc, FRS. Professor Popják earned his MD Sub Auspiciis Gubernatoris (the highest university distinction in Hungary). In 1939, he was awarded a British Council Scholar Award at the Postgraduate Medical School London in Professor Henry Dible’s laboratory where he began his career in lipid biochemistry. In 1941, he was appointed in Pathology at St Thomas’ Hospital Medical School in London where Sir Joseph Barcroft challenged him to determine the origin of fetal lipids (i.e. did they depend on a maternal supply or were they synthesized in the fetus?). To answer this question, Dr. Popják became the first in the UK to use radioisotopes in biology. Initially, he worked on fatty acid biosynthesis, but soon moved to study the details of the cholesterol biosynthetic pathway. His early work determined the chirality of the stereospecific incorporation of the carboxy carbon atom of acetic acid into C-1 of glycerol. In 1948, Dr. Popják began a collaboration with J.W Cornforth (later Sir John) at the National Institute for Medical Research, Mill Hill, London. In 1953, Dr. Popják was appointed the Director of the Radiopathology Research Unit at Hammersmith Hospital, London. Subsequently, the Shell Oil Company created a special laboratory to foster work at the interface of chemistry and biology, and appointed Cornforth and Popják as the Co-Directors. The collaboration between Cornforth and Popják continued until 1968. During this period, they elucidated the pathway for the conversion of acetate to squalene in the cholesterol biosynthetic pathway and pioneered the field of chirality. Together, they won numerous prestigious awards and prizes. In 1968, Dean Sherman Mellinkoff convinced Dr. Popják to move to the Department of Biological Chemistry at UCLA where he deciphered the stereospecific details of the conversion of squalene to lanosterol and discovered the mevalonate shunt pathway. The latter turned out to be the basis for the prenylation of proteins. At UCLA, Dr. Popják trained a number of investigators including Drs. Alan Fogelman and Peter Edwards, who went on to found the Atherosclerosis Research Laboratory at UCLA.  Dr. Popják passed away on December 30, 1998 and the Popják Scholar Award was established in 1999. The Popják Scholar Awardees are shown below and include a number of current UCLA faculty as well as faculty at other Universities around the world.

1999                Andrew Watson

2000                Diana Shih

2001                Heidi Kast

2002                Srinivasa Reddy

2003                Antonio Castrillo

2004                Yanqiao Zhang

2005                Liming Pei

2006                Angel Baldan

2007                Yucheng Yao

2008                Michael Weinstein

2009                Sangderk Lee

2010                Brian Bennett

2011                Elizabeth Tarling

2012                Cynthia Hong

2013                Mete Civelek and Thomas Vallim

2014-2015       Anaïs Briot

2015-2016       Arnab Chattopadhyay

2016-2017       Marcus Seldin

2017-2018       Bo Wang

2018-2019       Stephen D. Lee

2019-2020       Karthickeyan Chella Krishnan

2020-2021       Julia J. Mack

2021-2022       David Meriwether and Bethan Clifford

2022-2023       Xu Xiao and Yang Cao