Dr. Newton received her PhD in Chemistry from Stanford University and undertook her postdoctoral training in the lab of Daniel E. Koshland, Jr., at the University of California, Berkeley. She is currently Distinguished Professor of Pharmacology at the University of California, San Diego.  Dr. Newton is recipient of a Du Pont Young Faculty Award, Searle Scholars Award, NSF Young Investigator Award, NSF Career Advancement Award, Outstanding Alumnus Award from Simon Fraser University, Avanti Award from the ASBMB, Axelrod Award from ASPET, and the Biophysics Award in Health and Disease, Biophysical Society.  She is currently the President of the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. Newton has made ground-breaking contributions to our understanding of the structure, function, and regulation of protein kinase C and how its function is altered in disease, showing that function is generally lost in cancer and enhanced in neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s Disease.   Her work exemplifies how detailed dissection of the mechanisms of allosteric regulation of enzyme function provides the necessary biochemical understanding to drive effective therapeutic strategies.