Alan Tackett, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor of Biochemistry, received an Odyssey Medal for Research from Hendrix College. The Odyssey Medal is presented to alumni whose life achievements exemplify the ideals of the Hendrix Odyssey Program. Medalists are selected by the Hendrix Board of Trustees for their accomplishments in one of the six Odyssey categories: Artistic Creativity, Global Awareness, Professional and Leadership Development, Research, Service to the World, or Special Projects.
Alan Tackett, Ph.D., earned a degree in chemistry with distinction from Hendrix College in 1998, and received his Doctor of Philosophy degree in biochemistry and molecular biology from the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) in 2002. He performed postdoctoral training in cancer epigenetics and proteomics at The Rockefeller University in New York City from 2002-2005. He joined the faculty at UAMS in 2005 and has risen in the ranks to a tenured distinguished professor of biochemistry and molecular biology. Tackett received the Sharlau Family Endowed Chair for Cancer Research in 2016 and was nominated into the Arkansas Research Alliance in 2021. He currently serves as Deputy Director of the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute at UAMS.
As a UAMS faculty member, Tackett has built an internationally recognized research team focused on uncovering new therapeutic strategies to treat metastatic melanoma and developing the next generation of molecular profiling technologies to identify cancer biomarkers. He has published more than 150 scientific articles and holds multiple patents in these areas; and has received more than $40 million in government funding to support his research endeavors.
Tackett serves as director of two National Institutes of Health (NIH) research centers in Arkansas: a NIH Center of Biomedical Research Excellence in systems biology that has enabled critical infrastructure development for large data generating technologies and has provided tailored mentoring to numerous early career faculty resulting in their acquisition of over $25 million in government research funding; and a NIH National Resource for Quantitative Proteomics that has supported biomedical research in over 1,500 laboratories across every state in the U.S. and has provided training and workforce development to over 500 faculty and students, including many who are underrepresented in the biomedical research workforce.