Dr. Maria DeRosa received the John Charles Polonyi Award at the Munk Centre at the University of Toronto on Wednesday, October 25, 2006. Dr. DeRosa works in the emerging field of bionanotechnology, seeking to adapt biological building blocks to yield functional nanoscale devices such as sensors and catalysts. Her group is investigating the use of chemically-modified nucleic acid aptamers, single stranded DNA or RNA sequences that specifically bind to a diverse variety of targets, in biosensing and catalysis. Dr. DeRosa is the first professor of Carleton University to receive this prestigious award.